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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAR AND PEACE ***
CONTENTS
SECOND EPILOGUE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
BOOK ONE: 1805
CHAPTER I
“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still
try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really
believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no
longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do
you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.”
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pávlovna
Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna. With
these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of high rank and
importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pávlovna had had
a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe
being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.
All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered by a
scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:
“If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the prospect of
spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very
charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10—Annette Schérer.”
“Heavens! what a virulent attack!” replied the prince, not in the least
disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an embroidered
court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a serene
expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined French in which our
grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing
intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and at
court. He went up to Anna Pávlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa.
“First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend’s mind at rest,”
said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of
which indifference and even irony could be discerned.
“Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these
if one has any feeling?” said Anna Pávlovna. “You are staying the whole
evening, I hope?”
“And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday. I must put in
an appearance there,” said the prince. “My daughter is coming for me to take me
there.”
“I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess all these festivities and
fireworks are becoming wearisome.”
“If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been put
off,” said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force of habit said things he
did not even wish to be believed.
“Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosíltsev’s dispatch?
You know everything.”
“What can one say about it?” replied the prince in a cold, listless tone. “What
has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I
believe that we are ready to burn ours.”
Prince Vasíli always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part. Anna
Pávlovna Schérer on the contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed with
animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social
vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became
enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her.
The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always
played round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness
of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it
necessary, to correct.
In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pávlovna burst out:
“Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t understand things, but
Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia
alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high vocation
and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith in! Our good and
wonderful sovereign has to perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so
virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the
person of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just
one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial spirit
will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander’s loftiness of soul. She
has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret
motive in our actions. What answer did Novosíltsev get? None. The English
have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor
who wants nothing for himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what
have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not
perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all
Europe is powerless before him.... And I don’t believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a trap. I have
faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored monarch. He will save
Europe!”
She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
“I think,” said the prince with a smile, “that if you had been sent instead of our
dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of Prussia’s consent by
assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?”
“In a moment. À propos,” she added, becoming calm again, “I am expecting
two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is connected
with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best French families. He
is one of the genuine émigrés, the good ones. And also the Abbé Morio. Do you
know that profound thinker? He has been received by the Emperor. Had you
heard?”
“I shall be delighted to meet them,” said the prince. “But tell me,” he added
with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him, though the
question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his visit, “is it true that the
Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary at Vienna?
The baron by all accounts is a poor creature.”
Prince Vasíli wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were trying
through the Dowager Empress Márya Fëdorovna to secure it for the baron.
Anna Pávlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor anyone
else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was pleased with.
“Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,”
was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
As she named the Empress, Anna Pávlovna’s face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with sadness,
and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious patroness. She added
that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke beaucoup d’estime, and
again her face clouded over with sadness.
The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and
courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pávlovna wished both to
rebuke him (for daring to speak as he had done of a man recommended to the
Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she said:
“Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came out
everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly beautiful.”
The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
“I often think,” she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to the prince
and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and social topics were
ended and the time had come for intimate conversation—“I often think how
unfairly sometimes the joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two
such splendid children? I don’t speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don’t like
him,” she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows.
“Two such charming children. And really you appreciate them less than anyone,
and so you don’t deserve to have them.”
And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
“I can’t help it,” said the prince. “Lavater would have said I lack the bump of
paternity.”
“Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am
dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves” (and her face assumed
its melancholy expression), “he was mentioned at Her Majesty’s and you were
pitied....”
The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly, awaiting a
reply. He frowned.
“What would you have me do?” he said at last. “You know I did all a father
could for their education, and they have both turned out fools. Hippolyte is at
least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That is the only difference
between them.” He said this smiling in a way more natural and animated than
usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth very clearly revealed something
unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.
“And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father there
would be nothing I could reproach you with,” said Anna Pávlovna, looking up
pensively.
“I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my children are
the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That is how I explain it to
myself. It can’t be helped!”
He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a gesture. Anna
Pávlovna meditated.
“Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?” she asked.
“They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don’t feel that
weakness in myself as yet, I know a little person who is very unhappy with her
father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkónskaya.”
Prince Vasíli did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and
perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of the head
that he was considering this information.
“Do you know,” he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad current of
his thoughts, “that Anatole is costing me forty thousand rubles a year? And,” he
went on after a pause, “what will it be in five years, if he goes on like this?”
Presently he added: “That’s what we fathers have to put up with.... Is this
princess of yours rich?”
“Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the well-
known Prince Bolkónski who had to retire from the army under the late
Emperor, and was nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ He is very clever but
eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a brother; I think
you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of
Kutúzov’s and will be here tonight.”
“Listen, dear Annette,” said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pávlovna’s hand
and for some reason drawing it downwards. “Arrange that affair for me and I
shall always be your most devoted slave-slafe with an f, as a village elder of
mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good family and that’s all I want.”
And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the maid of
honor’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as he lay back in his
armchair, looking in another direction.
“Attendez,” said Anna Pávlovna, reflecting, “I’ll speak to Lise, young
Bolkónski’s wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can be arranged. It
shall be on your family’s behalf that I’ll start my apprenticeship as old maid.”
CHAPTER II
Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling. The highest Petersburg
society was assembled there: people differing widely in age and character but
alike in the social circle to which they belonged. Prince Vasíli’s daughter, the
beautiful Hélène, came to take her father to the ambassador’s entertainment; she
wore a ball dress and her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkónskaya, known as la femme la plus séduisante de Pétersbourg, * was also
there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did
not go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince Vasíli’s son,
Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbé Morio
and many others had also come.
* The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
To each new arrival Anna Pávlovna said, “You have not yet seen my aunt,” or
“You do not know my aunt?” and very gravely conducted him or her to a little
old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who had come sailing in from
another room as soon as the guests began to arrive; and slowly turning her eyes
from the visitor to her aunt, Anna Pávlovna mentioned each one’s name and then
left them.
Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one
of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them cared about;
Anna Pávlovna observed these greetings with mournful and solemn interest and
silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in the same words, about their
health and her own, and the health of Her Majesty, “who, thank God, was better
today.” And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience,
left the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty
and did not return to her the whole evening.
The young Princess Bolkónskaya had brought some work in a gold-
embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a delicate dark
down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth, but it lifted all the more
sweetly, and was especially charming when she occasionally drew it down to
meet the lower lip. As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman,
her defect—the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to
be her own special and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight
of this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and
health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young
ones who looked at her, after being in her company and talking to her a little
while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who
talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of
her white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that day.
The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying steps, her
workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat down on a sofa near
the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a pleasure to herself and to all
around her. “I have brought my work,” said she in French, displaying her bag
and addressing all present. “Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked
trick on me,” she added, turning to her hostess. “You wrote that it was to be quite
a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed.” And she spread out her
arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray dress, girdled with a
broad ribbon just below the breast.
“Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone else,” replied
Anna Pávlovna.
“You know,” said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in French,
turning to a general, “my husband is deserting me? He is going to get himself
killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?” she added, addressing Prince
Vasíli, and without waiting for an answer she turned to speak to his daughter, the
beautiful Hélène.
“What a delightful woman this little princess is!” said Prince Vasíli to Anna
Pávlovna.
One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with close-
cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable at that time, a
very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout young man was an
illegitimate son of Count Bezúkhov, a well-known grandee of Catherine’s time
who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man had not yet entered either the
military or civil service, as he had only just returned from abroad where he had
been educated, and this was his first appearance in society. Anna Pávlovna
greeted him with the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing
room. But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at
the sight of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face
when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than the other
men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to the clever though shy,
but observant and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone
else in that drawing room.
“It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor invalid,”
said Anna Pávlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her aunt as she
conducted him to her.
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as if
in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little princess
with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.
Anna Pávlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the aunt
without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty’s health. Anna Pávlovna
in dismay detained him with the words: “Do you know the Abbé Morio? He is a
most interesting man.”
“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very interesting
but hardly feasible.”
“You think so?” rejoined Anna Pávlovna in order to say something and get
away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now committed a reverse act
of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had finished speaking to him,
and now he continued to speak to another who wished to get away. With his head
bent, and his big feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking
the abbé’s plan chimerical.
“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pávlovna with a smile.
And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she
resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready to help at
any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As the foreman of a
spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes round and notices here a
spindle that has stopped or there one that creaks or makes more noise than it
should, and hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pávlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-
noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational
machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety
about Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he
approached the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said there,
and again when he passed to another group whose center was the abbé.
Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pávlovna’s was
the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all the intellectual lights of
Petersburg were gathered there and, like a child in a toyshop, did not know
which way to look, afraid of missing any clever conversation that was to be
heard. Seeing the self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those
present he was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood
waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of
doing.
CHAPTER III
Anna Pávlovna’s reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed steadily
and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt, beside whom sat
only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face was rather out of place in
this brilliant society, the whole company had settled into three groups. One,
chiefly masculine, had formed round the abbé. Another, of young people, was
grouped round the beautiful Princess Hélène, Prince Vasíli’s daughter, and the
little Princess Bolkónskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her
age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna Pávlovna.
The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished
manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of politeness
modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found himself.
Anna Pávlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat to her guests. As a clever
maître d’hôtel serves up as a specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no
one who had seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pávlovna
served up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbé, as peculiarly choice
morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the murder
of the Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d’Enghien had perished by
his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons for Buonaparte’s
hatred of him.
“Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte,” said Anna Pávlovna, with a
pleasant feeling that there was something à la Louis XV in the sound of that
sentence: “Contez nous çela, Vicomte.”
The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness to
comply. Anna Pávlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone to listen
to his tale.
“The vicomte knew the duc personally,” whispered Anna Pávlovna to one of
the guests. “The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur,” said she to another. “How
evidently he belongs to the best society,” said she to a third; and the vicomte was
served up to the company in the choicest and most advantageous style, like a
well-garnished joint of roast beef on a hot dish.
The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.
“Come over here, Hélène, dear,” said Anna Pávlovna to the beautiful young
princess who was sitting some way off, the center of another group.
The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with which she
had first entered the room—the smile of a perfectly beautiful woman. With a
slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white
shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who
made way for her, not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and shapely
shoulders, back, and bosom—which in the fashion of those days were very much
exposed—and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as she
moved toward Anna Pávlovna. Hélène was so lovely that not only did she not
show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even appeared shy of her
unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be
unable, to diminish its effect.
“How lovely!” said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted his
shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something extraordinary when
she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also with her unchanging smile.
“Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience,” said he, smilingly
inclining his head.
The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and considered a reply
unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the story was being told she sat
upright, glancing now at her beautiful round arm, altered in shape by its pressure
on the table, now at her still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a
diamond necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pávlovna, at once
adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor’s face, and again
relapsed into her radiant smile.
The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Hélène.
“Wait a moment, I’ll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking of?”
she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. “Fetch me my workbag.”
There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking merrily to
everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in her seat.
“Now I am all right,” she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she took up
her work.
Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle and moving a
chair close to hers seated himself beside her.
Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary resemblance to his
beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that in spite of this resemblance he was
exceedingly ugly. His features were like his sister’s, but while in her case
everything was lit up by a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of
animation, and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen self-
confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, nose, and mouth all
seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, and his arms and legs always
fell into unnatural positions.
“It’s not going to be a ghost story?” said he, sitting down beside the princess
and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this instrument he could not
begin to speak.
“Why no, my dear fellow,” said the astonished narrator, shrugging his
shoulders.
“Because I hate ghost stories,” said Prince Hippolyte in a tone which showed
that he only understood the meaning of his words after he had uttered them.
He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether
what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green dress
coat, knee breeches of the color of cuisse de nymphe effrayée, as he called it,
shoes, and silk stockings.
The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then current, to the
effect that the Duc d’Enghien had gone secretly to Paris to visit Mademoiselle
George; that at her house he came upon Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous
actress’ favors, and that in his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the
fainting fits to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc’s mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by death.
The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point where the
rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies looked agitated.
“Charming!” said Anna Pávlovna with an inquiring glance at the little
princess.
“Charming!” whispered the little princess, sticking the needle into her work as
if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story prevented her from going
on with it.
The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully prepared to
continue, but just then Anna Pávlovna, who had kept a watchful eye on the
young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he was talking too loudly and
vehemently with the abbé, so she hurried to the rescue. Pierre had managed to
start a conversation with the abbé about the balance of power, and the latter,
evidently interested by the young man’s simple-minded eagerness, was
explaining his pet theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too
naturally, which was why Anna Pávlovna disapproved.
“The means are ... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the
people,” the abbé was saying. “It is only necessary for one powerful nation like
Russia—barbaric as she is said to be—to place herself disinterestedly at the head
of an alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance of power of
Europe, and it would save the world!”
“But how are you to get that balance?” Pierre was beginning.
At that moment Anna Pávlovna came up and, looking severely at Pierre, asked
the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The Italian’s face instantly changed
and assumed an offensively affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to
him when conversing with women.
“I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the society, more
especially of the feminine society, in which I have had the honor of being
received, that I have not yet had time to think of the climate,” said he.
Not letting the abbé and Pierre escape, Anna Pávlovna, the more conveniently
to keep them under observation, brought them into the larger circle.
CHAPTER IV
Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew Bolkónski,
the little princess’ husband. He was a very handsome young man, of medium
height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about him, from his weary, bored
expression to his quiet, measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his
quiet, little wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or
listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed
to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from her with a
grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pávlovna’s hand, and
screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.
“You are off to the war, Prince?” said Anna Pávlovna.
“General Kutúzov,” said Bolkónski, speaking French and stressing the last
syllable of the general’s name like a Frenchman, “has been pleased to take me as
an aide-de-camp....”
“And Lise, your wife?”
“She will go to the country.”
“Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?”
“André,” said his wife, addressing her husband in the same coquettish manner
in which she spoke to other men, “the vicomte has been telling us such a tale
about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!”
Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who from the
moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with glad,
affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he looked round Prince
Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance with whoever was touching
his arm, but when he saw Pierre’s beaming face he gave him an unexpectedly
kind and pleasant smile.
“There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?” said he to Pierre.
“I knew you would be here,” replied Pierre. “I will come to supper with you.
May I?” he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the vicomte who was
continuing his story.
“No, impossible!” said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre’s hand to
show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished to say something
more, but at that moment Prince Vasíli and his daughter got up to go and the two
young men rose to let them pass.
“You must excuse me, dear Vicomte,” said Prince Vasíli to the Frenchman,
holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent his rising. “This
unfortunate fete at the ambassador’s deprives me of a pleasure, and obliges me
to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave your enchanting party,” said he, turning
to Anna Pávlovna.
His daughter, Princess Hélène, passed between the chairs, lightly holding up
the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more radiantly on her beautiful
face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous, almost frightened, eyes as she passed
him.
“Very lovely,” said Prince Andrew.
“Very,” said Pierre.
In passing Prince Vasíli seized Pierre’s hand and said to Anna Pávlovna:
“Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a whole month and this
is the first time I have seen him in society. Nothing is so necessary for a young
man as the society of clever women.”
Anna Pávlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew his
father to be a connection of Prince Vasíli’s. The elderly lady who had been
sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Prince Vasíli in the
anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed had left her kindly and
tear-worn face and it now expressed only anxiety and fear.
“How about my son Borís, Prince?” said she, hurrying after him into the
anteroom. “I can’t remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me what news I may
take back to my poor boy.”
Although Prince Vasíli listened reluctantly and not very politely to the elderly
lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an ingratiating and
appealing smile, and took his hand that he might not go away.
“What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he would be
transferred to the Guards at once?” said she.
“Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can,” answered Prince Vasíli,
“but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I should advise you to appeal to
Rumyántsev through Prince Golítsyn. That would be the best way.”
The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskáya, belonging to one of the best
families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of society had
lost her former influential connections. She had now come to Petersburg to
procure an appointment in the Guards for her only son. It was, in fact, solely to
meet Prince Vasíli that she had obtained an invitation to Anna Pávlovna’s
reception and had sat listening to the vicomte’s story. Prince Vasíli’s words
frightened her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for
a moment; then she smiled again and clutched Prince Vasíli’s arm more tightly.
“Listen to me, Prince,” said she. “I have never yet asked you for anything and
I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my father’s friendship for
you; but now I entreat you for God’s sake to do this for my son—and I shall
always regard you as a benefactor,” she added hurriedly. “No, don’t be angry, but
promise! I have asked Golítsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you
always were,” she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.
“Papa, we shall be late,” said Princess Hélène, turning her beautiful head and
looking over her classically molded shoulder as she stood waiting by the door.
Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized if it is
to last. Prince Vasíli knew this, and having once realized that if he asked on
behalf of all who begged of him, he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he
became chary of using his influence. But in Princess Drubetskáya’s case he felt,
after her second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the first steps
in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners that she was one of those
women—mostly mothers—who, having once made up their minds, will not rest
until they have gained their end, and are prepared if necessary to go on insisting
day after day and hour after hour, and even to make scenes. This last
consideration moved him.
“My dear Anna Mikháylovna,” said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, “it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask; but to
prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father’s memory, I will do the
impossible—your son shall be transferred to the Guards. Here is my hand on it.
Are you satisfied?”
“My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you—I knew your
kindness!” He turned to go.
“Wait—just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards...” she
faltered. “You are on good terms with Michael Ilariónovich Kutúzov ...
recommend Borís to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at rest, and then...”
Prince Vasíli smiled.
“No, I won’t promise that. You don’t know how Kutúzov is pestered since his
appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that all the Moscow
ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as adjutants.”
“No, but do promise! I won’t let you go! My dear benefactor...”
“Papa,” said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before, “we shall be
late.”
“Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?”
“Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?”
“Certainly; but about Kutúzov, I don’t promise.”
“Do promise, do promise, Vasíli!” cried Anna Mikháylovna as he went, with
the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came naturally to her,
but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.
Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed all the
old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone her face resumed its former
cold, artificial expression. She returned to the group where the vicomte was still
talking, and again pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to
leave. Her task was accomplished.
CHAPTER V
“And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan?” asked
Anna Pávlovna, “and of the comedy of the people of Genoa and Lucca laying
their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on
a throne and granting the petitions of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to
make one’s head whirl! It is as if the whole world had gone crazy.”
Prince Andrew looked Anna Pávlovna straight in the face with a sarcastic
smile.
“‘Dieu me la donne, gare à qui la touche!’’ * They say he was very fine when
he said that,” he remarked, repeating the words in Italian: “‘Dio mi l’ha dato.
Guai a chi la tocchi!’’
* God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!
“I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run over,” Anna
Pávlovna continued. “The sovereigns will not be able to endure this man who is
a menace to everything.”
“The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia,” said the vicomte, polite but
hopeless: “The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis XVII, for
the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!” and he became more animated.
“And believe me, they are reaping the reward of their betrayal of the Bourbon
cause. The sovereigns! Why, they are sending ambassadors to compliment the
usurper.”
And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.
Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time through
his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the little princess, and
having asked for a needle began tracing the Condé coat of arms on the table. He
explained this to her with as much gravity as if she had asked him to do it.
“Bâton de gueules, engrêlé de gueules d’azur—maison Condé,” said he.
The princess listened, smiling.
“If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer,” the vicomte
continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which he is better
acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others but follows the current of
his own thoughts, “things will have gone too far. By intrigues, violence, exile,
and executions, French society—I mean good French society—will have been
forever destroyed, and then....”
He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to make a
remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pávlovna, who had him
under observation, interrupted:
“The Emperor Alexander,” said she, with the melancholy which always
accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, “has declared that he
will leave it to the French people themselves to choose their own form of
government; and I believe that once free from the usurper, the whole nation will
certainly throw itself into the arms of its rightful king,” she concluded, trying to
be amiable to the royalist emigrant.
“That is doubtful,” said Prince Andrew. “Monsieur le Vicomte quite rightly
supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it will be difficult to
return to the old regime.”
“From what I have heard,” said Pierre, blushing and breaking into the
conversation, “almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to Bonaparte’s
side.”
“It is the Buonapartists who say that,” replied the vicomte without looking at
Pierre. “At the present time it is difficult to know the real state of French public
opinion.”
“Bonaparte has said so,” remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic smile.
It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his remarks at
him, though without looking at him.
“‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,’” Prince Andrew
continued after a short silence, again quoting Napoleon’s words. “‘I opened my
antechambers and they crowded in.’ I do not know how far he was justified in
saying so.”
“Not in the least,” replied the vicomte. “After the murder of the duc even the
most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some people,” he went on,
turning to Anna Pávlovna, “he ever was a hero, after the murder of the duc there
was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on earth.”
Before Anna Pávlovna and the others had time to smile their appreciation of
the vicomte’s epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and though
Anna Pávlovna felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she was unable
to stop him.
“The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,” declared Monsieur Pierre, “was a
political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed greatness of soul by
not fearing to take on himself the whole responsibility of that deed.”
“Dieu! Mon Dieu!” muttered Anna Pávlovna in a terrified whisper.
“What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows greatness
of soul?” said the little princess, smiling and drawing her work nearer to her.
“Oh! Oh!” exclaimed several voices.
“Capital!” said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping his knee with
the palm of his hand.
The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at his
audience over his spectacles and continued.
“I say so,” he continued desperately, “because the Bourbons fled from the
Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon alone understood the
Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general good, he could not stop short
for the sake of one man’s life.”
“Won’t you come over to the other table?” suggested Anna Pávlovna.
But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.
“No,” cried he, becoming more and more eager, “Napoleon is great because
he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was
good in it—equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press—and
only for that reason did he obtain power.”
“Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to commit
murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have called him a great
man,” remarked the vicomte.
“He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he might rid them
of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great man. The Revolution
was a grand thing!” continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and
provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in
his mind.
“What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that... But won’t
you come to this other table?” repeated Anna Pávlovna.
“Rousseau’s Contrat Social,” said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.
“I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas.”
“Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide,” again interjected an ironical
voice.
“Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most important.
What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices, and
equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon has retained in full force.”
“Liberty and equality,” said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last deciding
seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were, “high-sounding
words which have long been discredited. Who does not love liberty and
equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality. Have people since the
Revolution become happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte
has destroyed it.”
Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the vicomte
and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of Pierre’s outburst
Anna Pávlovna, despite her social experience, was horror-struck. But when she
saw that Pierre’s sacrilegious words had not exasperated the vicomte, and had
convinced herself that it was impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and
joined the vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.
“But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” said she, “how do you explain the fact of a
great man executing a duc—or even an ordinary man who—is innocent and
untried?”
“I should like,” said the vicomte, “to ask how monsieur explains the 18th
Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at all like the
conduct of a great man!”
“And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!” said the little
princess, shrugging her shoulders.
“He’s a low fellow, say what you will,” remarked Prince Hippolyte.
Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His smile
was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled, his grave, even rather
gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by another—a childlike, kindly, even
rather silly look, which seemed to ask forgiveness.
The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly that this
young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were silent.
“How do you expect him to answer you all at once?” said Prince Andrew.
“Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish between his acts as
a private person, as a general, and as an emperor. So it seems to me.”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of this
reinforcement.
“One must admit,” continued Prince Andrew, “that Napoleon as a man was
great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he gave his hand
to the plague-stricken; but ... but there are other acts which it is difficult to
justify.”
Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of
Pierre’s remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time to go.
Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to attend, and
asking them all to be seated began:
“I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it. Excuse
me, Vicomte—I must tell it in Russian or the point will be lost....” And Prince
Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian as a Frenchman would speak
after spending about a year in Russia. Everyone waited, so emphatically and
eagerly did he demand their attention to his story.
“There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She must have
two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her taste. And she
had a lady’s maid, also big. She said....”
Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with difficulty.
“She said.... Oh yes! She said, ‘Girl,’ to the maid, ‘put on a livery, get up
behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some calls.’”
Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his
audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several persons,
among them the elderly lady and Anna Pávlovna, did however smile.
“She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and her long
hair came down....” Here he could contain himself no longer and went on,
between gasps of laughter: “And the whole world knew....”
And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told it, or
why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pávlovna and the others appreciated
Prince Hippolyte’s social tact in so agreeably ending Pierre’s unpleasant and
unamiable outburst. After the anecdote the conversation broke up into
insignificant small talk about the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who
would meet whom, and when and where.
CHAPTER VI
Having thanked Anna Pávlovna for her charming soiree, the guests began to
take their leave.
Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with huge red
hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a drawing room and still
less how to leave one; that is, how to say something particularly agreeable before
going away. Besides this he was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up
instead of his own, the general’s three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the
plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his absent-mindedness and
inability to enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by his
kindly, simple, and modest expression. Anna Pávlovna turned toward him and,
with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded
and said: “I hope to see you again, but I also hope you will change your
opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.”
When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again everybody saw
his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, “Opinions are opinions, but you
see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am.” And everyone, including Anna
Pávlovna, felt this.
Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders to the
footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened indifferently to his
wife’s chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also come into the hall. Prince
Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her
through his eyeglass.
“Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold,” said the little princess, taking leave
of Anna Pávlovna. “It is settled,” she added in a low voice.
Anna Pávlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match she
contemplated between Anatole and the little princess’ sister-in-law.
“I rely on you, my dear,” said Anna Pávlovna, also in a low tone. “Write to
her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au revoir! ”—and she
left the hall.
Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his face close to
her, began to whisper something.
Two footmen, the princess’ and his own, stood holding a shawl and a cloak,
waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to the French sentences
which to them were meaningless, with an air of understanding but not wishing to
appear to do so. The princess as usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.
“I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s,” said Prince Hippolyte “—so
dull—. It has been a delightful evening, has it not? Delightful!”
“They say the ball will be very good,” replied the princess, drawing up her
downy little lip. “All the pretty women in society will be there.”
“Not all, for you will not be there; not all,” said Prince Hippolyte smiling
joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he even pushed aside,
he began wrapping it round the princess. Either from awkwardness or
intentionally (no one could have said which) after the shawl had been adjusted
he kept his arm around her for a long time, as though embracing her.
Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at her husband.
Prince Andrew’s eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did he seem.
“Are you ready?” he asked his wife, looking past her.
Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest fashion
reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out into the porch following
the princess, whom a footman was helping into the carriage.
“Princesse, au revoir,” cried he, stumbling with his tongue as well as with his
feet.
The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the dark carriage,
her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince Hippolyte, under pretense of
helping, was in everyone’s way.
“Allow me, sir,” said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold, disagreeable tone to
Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.
“I am expecting you, Pierre,” said the same voice, but gently and
affectionately.
The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte laughed
spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte whom he had
promised to take home.
“Well, mon cher,” said the vicomte, having seated himself beside Hippolyte in
the carriage, “your little princess is very nice, very nice indeed, quite French,”
and he kissed the tips of his fingers. Hippolyte burst out laughing.
“Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,” continued
the vicomte. “I pity the poor husband, that little officer who gives himself the
airs of a monarch.”
Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, “And you were saying
that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to know how to deal
with them.”
Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew’s study like one quite
at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, took from the shelf
the first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar’s Commentaries), and resting
on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.
“What have you done to Mlle Schérer? She will be quite ill now,” said Prince
Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white hands.
Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his eager face
to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.
“That abbé is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the right light....
In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but—I do not know how to express it
... not by a balance of political power....”
It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such abstract
conversation.
“One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you at last
decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a diplomatist?” asked
Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.
Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.
“Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one or the other.”
“But you must decide on something! Your father expects it.”
Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbé as tutor, and had
remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow his father
dismissed the abbé and said to the young man, “Now go to Petersburg, look
round, and choose your profession. I will agree to anything. Here is a letter to
Prince Vasíli, and here is money. Write to me all about it, and I will help you in
everything.” Pierre had already been choosing a career for three months, and had
not decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was
speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
“But he must be a Freemason,” said he, referring to the abbé whom he had
met that evening.
“That is all nonsense.” Prince Andrew again interrupted him, “let us talk
business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?”
“No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to tell you.
There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for freedom I could
understand it and should be the first to enter the army; but to help England and
Austria against the greatest man in the world is not right.”
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s childish words. He put
on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such nonsense, but it would
in fact have been difficult to give any other answer than the one Prince Andrew
gave to this naïve question.
“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,” he
said.
“And that would be splendid,” said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
“Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about....”
“Well, why are you going to the war?” asked Pierre.
“What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that I am going....” He paused. “I am
going because the life I am leading here does not suit me!”
CHAPTER VII
The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room. Prince Andrew
shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it had had in Anna
Pávlovna’s drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa. The princess
came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as fresh and elegant as the
other. Prince Andrew rose and politely placed a chair for her.
“How is it,” she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly and fussily in
the easy chair, “how is it Annette never got married? How stupid you men all are
not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so, but you have no sense about
women. What an argumentative fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!”
“And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he wants to
go to the war,” replied Pierre, addressing the princess with none of the
embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their intercourse with
young women.
The princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched her to the quick.
“Ah, that is just what I tell him!” said she. “I don’t understand it; I don’t in the
least understand why men can’t live without wars. How is it that we women
don’t want anything of the kind, don’t need it? Now you shall judge between us.
I always tell him: Here he is Uncle’s aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He
is so well known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the
Apráksins’ I heard a lady asking, ‘Is that the famous Prince Andrew?’ I did
indeed.” She laughed. “He is so well received everywhere. He might easily
become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You know the Emperor spoke to him most
graciously. Annette and I were speaking of how to arrange it. What do you
think?”
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the conversation,
gave no reply.
“When are you starting?” he asked.
“Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it spoken of,” said the
princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had spoken to
Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly ill-suited to the family
circle of which Pierre was almost a member. “Today when I remembered that all
these delightful associations must be broken off ... and then you know, André...”
(she looked significantly at her husband) “I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” she
whispered, and a shudder ran down her back.
Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone besides
Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone of frigid
politeness.
“What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don’t understand,” said he.
“There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim of his own,
goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone in the country.”
“With my father and sister, remember,” said Prince Andrew gently.
“Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to be
afraid.”
Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a joyful, but
an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she felt it indecorous to
speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the gist of the matter lay in that.
“I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,” said Prince Andrew slowly,
not taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
“No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have....”
“Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrew. “You had
better go.”
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered. Prince
Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naïve surprise, now at him and now at
her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
“Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?” exclaimed the little
princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful grimace. “I
have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed so to me? What
have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no pity for me. Why is
it?”
“Lise!” was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an entreaty,
a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself regret her words. But
she went on hurriedly:
“You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave like that
six months ago?”
“Lise, I beg you to desist,” said Prince Andrew still more emphatically.
Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to all
this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the sight of
tears and was ready to cry himself.
“Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because.... I assure you I myself
have experienced ... and so ... because ... No, excuse me! An outsider is out of
place here.... No, don’t distress yourself.... Good-by!”
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
“No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of the
pleasure of spending the evening with you.”
“No, he thinks only of himself,” muttered the princess without restraining her
angry tears.
“Lise!” said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch which
indicates that patience is exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’ pretty face
changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes glanced
askance at her husband’s face, and her own assumed the timid, deprecating
expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its drooping tail.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she muttered, and lifting her dress with one hand she
went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.
“Good night, Lise,” said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand as he
would have done to a stranger.
CHAPTER VIII
The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre continually
glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead with his small
hand.
“Let us go and have supper,” he said with a sigh, going to the door.
They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room.
Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and glass bore that imprint
of newness found in the households of the newly married. Halfway through
supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous
agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk—as one
who has long had something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak out.
“Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry till you
can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have
ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or
else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and
good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be
wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you
marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step
that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will
be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!... But what’s the
good?...” and he waved his arm.
Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and the
good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend in
amazement.
“My wife,” continued Prince Andrew, “is an excellent woman, one of those
rare women with whom a man’s honor is safe; but, O God, what would I not give
now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I mention this,
because I like you.”
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkónski who had
lolled in Anna Pávlovna’s easy chairs and with half-closed eyes had uttered
French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face was now
quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which the fire of life had seemed
extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light. It was evident that the more
lifeless he seemed at ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these
moments of almost morbid irritation.
“You don’t understand why I say this,” he continued, “but it is the whole story
of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career,” said he (though Pierre had not
mentioned Bonaparte), “but Bonaparte when he worked went step by step
toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing but his aim to consider, and he
reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you
lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you
down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and
triviality—these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going
to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for
nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit,” continued Prince Andrew,
“and at Anna Pávlovna’s they listen to me. And that stupid set without whom my
wife cannot exist, and those women.... If you only knew what those society
women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid,
trivial in everything—that’s what women are when you see them in their true
colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were something in
them, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow;
don’t marry!” concluded Prince Andrew.
“It seems funny to me,” said Pierre, “that you, you should consider yourself
incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have everything before you,
everything. And you....”
He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he thought of
his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.
“How can he talk like that?” thought Pierre. He considered his friend a model
of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the highest degree just the
very qualities Pierre lacked, and which might be best described as strength of
will. Pierre was always astonished at Prince Andrew’s calm manner of treating
everybody, his extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read
everything, knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above
all at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck by
Andrew’s lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he himself was
particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a defect but as a sign of
strength.
Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise and
commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels that they may
run smoothly.
“My part is played out,” said Prince Andrew. “What’s the use of talking about
me? Let us talk about you,” he added after a silence, smiling at his reassuring
thoughts.
That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre’s face.
“But what is there to say about me?” said Pierre, his face relaxing into a
careless, merry smile. “What am I? An illegitimate son!” He suddenly blushed
crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great effort to say this. “Without a
name and without means... And it really...” But he did not say what “it really”
was. “For the present I am free and am all right. Only I haven’t the least idea
what I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously.”
Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance—friendly and affectionate
as it was—expressed a sense of his own superiority.
“I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among our whole
set. Yes, you’re all right! Choose what you will; it’s all the same. You’ll be all
right anywhere. But look here: give up visiting those Kurágins and leading that
sort of life. It suits you so badly—all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of
it!”
“What would you have, my dear fellow?” answered Pierre, shrugging his
shoulders. “Women, my dear fellow; women!”
“I don’t understand it,” replied Prince Andrew. “Women who are comme il
faut, that’s a different matter; but the Kurágins’ set of women, ‘women and wine’
I don’t understand!”
Pierre was staying at Prince Vasíli Kurágin’s and sharing the dissipated life of
his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to reform by marrying him to
Prince Andrew’s sister.
“Do you know?” said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy thought,
“seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading such a life I can’t decide or
think properly about anything. One’s head aches, and one spends all one’s
money. He asked me for tonight, but I won’t go.”
“You give me your word of honor not to go?”
“On my honor!”
CHAPTER IX
It was past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a cloudless,
northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending to drive straight
home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more he felt the impossibility of
going to sleep on such a night. It was light enough to see a long way in the
deserted street and it seemed more like morning or evening than night. On the
way Pierre remembered that Anatole Kurágin was expecting the usual set for
cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout, finishing
with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.
“I should like to go to Kurágin’s,” thought he.
But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go there.
Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so passionately once
more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to that he decided to go.
The thought immediately occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrew was
of no account, because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole
to come to his gathering; “besides,” thought he, “all such ‘words of honor’ are
conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if one considers that by
tomorrow one may be dead, or something so extraordinary may happen to one
that honor and dishonor will be all the same!” Pierre often indulged in
reflections of this sort, nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to
Kurágin’s.
Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards’ barracks, in which Anatole
lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the stairs, and went in at the
open door. There was no one in the anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and
overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices
and shouting in the distance.
Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet dispersed. Pierre
threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in which were the remains of
supper. A footman, thinking no one saw him, was drinking on the sly what was
left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of
familiar voices, the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or
nine young men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three others
were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by the chain and trying to set
him at the others.
“I bet a hundred on Stevens!” shouted one.
“Mind, no holding on!” cried another.
“I bet on Dólokhov!” cried a third. “Kurágin, you part our hands.”
“There, leave Bruin alone; here’s a bet on.”
“At one draught, or he loses!” shouted a fourth.
“Jacob, bring a bottle!” shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow who stood in
the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine linen shirt unfastened in
front. “Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here is Pétya! Good man!” cried he, addressing
Pierre.
Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes, particularly
striking among all these drunken voices by its sober ring, cried from the
window: “Come here; part the bets!” This was Dólokhov, an officer of the
Semënov regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist, who was living with
Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him merrily.
“I don’t understand. What’s it all about?”
“Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here,” said Anatole, and taking a
glass from the table he went up to Pierre.
“First of all you must drink!”
Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows at the tipsy
guests who were again crowding round the window, and listening to their chatter.
Anatole kept on refilling Pierre’s glass while explaining that Dólokhov was
betting with Stevens, an English naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of
rum sitting on the outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging
out.
“Go on, you must drink it all,” said Anatole, giving Pierre the last glass, “or I
won’t let you go!”
“No, I won’t,” said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to the
window.
Dólokhov was holding the Englishman’s hand and clearly and distinctly
repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself particularly to Anatole and
Pierre.
Dólokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue eyes. He was
about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore no mustache, so that his
mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was clearly seen. The lines of that
mouth were remarkably finely curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a
sharp wedge and closed firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two
distinct smiles played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this,
together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes, produced an effect
which made it impossible not to notice his face. Dólokhov was a man of small
means and no connections. Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of
rubles, Dólokhov lived with him and had placed himself on such a footing that
all who knew them, including Anatole himself, respected him more than they did
Anatole. Dólokhov could play all games and nearly always won. However much
he drank, he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kurágin and Dólokhov were at
that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.
The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented anyone
from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two footmen, who were
evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions and shouts of the gentlemen
around.
Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted to smash
something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame, but could not
move it. He smashed a pane.
“You have a try, Hercules,” said he, turning to Pierre.
Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame out with a
crash.
“Take it right out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said Dólokhov.
“Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?” said Anatole.
“First-rate,” said Pierre, looking at Dólokhov, who with a bottle of rum in his
hand was approaching the window, from which the light of the sky, the dawn
merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.
Dólokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the window sill.
“Listen!” cried he, standing there and addressing those in the room. All were
silent.
“I bet fifty imperials”—he spoke French that the Englishman might
understand him, but he did not speak it very well—“I bet fifty imperials ... or do
you wish to make it a hundred?” added he, addressing the Englishman.
“No, fifty,” replied the latter.
“All right. Fifty imperials ... that I will drink a whole bottle of rum without
taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on this spot” (he stooped
and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the window) “and without holding on to
anything. Is that right?”
“Quite right,” said the Englishman.
Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the buttons of his
coat and looking down at him—the Englishman was short—began repeating the
terms of the wager to him in English.
“Wait!” cried Dólokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill to
attract attention. “Wait a bit, Kurágin. Listen! If anyone else does the same, I
will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?”
The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to accept
this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and though he kept nodding to
show that he understood, Anatole went on translating Dólokhov’s words into
English. A thin young lad, an hussar of the Life Guards, who had been losing
that evening, climbed on the window sill, leaned over, and looked down.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” he muttered, looking down from the window at the stones of
the pavement.
“Shut up!” cried Dólokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad
jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.
Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it easily, Dólokhov
climbed carefully and slowly through the window and lowered his legs. Pressing
against both sides of the window, he adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his
hands, moved a little to the right and then to the left, and took up the bottle.
Anatole brought two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was
already quite light. Dólokhov’s back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were
lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the Englishman in
front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older than the others present,
suddenly pushed forward with a scared and angry look and wanted to seize hold
of Dólokhov’s shirt.
“I say, this is folly! He’ll be killed,” said this more sensible man.
Anatole stopped him.
“Don’t touch him! You’ll startle him and then he’ll be killed. Eh?... What
then?... Eh?”
Dólokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, arranged
himself on his seat.
“If anyone comes meddling again,” said he, emitting the words separately
through his thin compressed lips, “I will throw him down there. Now then!”
Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the bottle and
lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised his free hand to balance
himself. One of the footmen who had stooped to pick up some broken glass
remained in that position without taking his eyes from the window and from
Dólokhov’s back. Anatole stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked
on sideways, pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran
to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to the wall.
Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade though his features
now expressed horror and fear. All were still. Pierre took his hands from his
eyes. Dólokhov still sat in the same position, only his head was thrown further
back till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle
was lifted higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was
emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting yet further back.
“Why is it so long?” thought Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour
had elapsed. Suddenly Dólokhov made a backward movement with his spine,
and his arm trembled nervously; this was sufficient to cause his whole body to
slip as he sat on the sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm
wavered still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the window
sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered his eyes and thought he
would never open them again. Suddenly he was aware of a stir all around. He
looked up: Dólokhov was standing on the window sill, with a pale but radiant
face.
“It’s empty.”
He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dólokhov
jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.
“Well done!... Fine fellow!... There’s a bet for you!... Devil take you!” came
from different sides.
The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money.
Dólokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the window
sill.
“Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I’ll do the same thing!” he suddenly
cried. “Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a bottle. I’ll do it....
Bring a bottle!”
“Let him do it, let him do it,” said Dólokhov, smiling.
“What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, you go
giddy even on a staircase,” exclaimed several voices.
“I’ll drink it! Let’s have a bottle of rum!” shouted Pierre, banging the table
with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb out of the
window.
They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who touched
him was sent flying.
“No, you’ll never manage him that way,” said Anatole. “Wait a bit and I’ll get
round him.... Listen! I’ll take your bet tomorrow, but now we are all going to
——’s.”
“Come on then,” cried Pierre. “Come on!... And we’ll take Bruin with us.”
And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground, and
began dancing round the room with it.
CHAPTER X
Prince Vasíli kept the promise he had given to Princess Drubetskáya who had
spoken to him on behalf of her only son Borís on the evening of Anna
Pávlovna’s soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an exception
made, and Borís transferred into the regiment of Semënov Guards with the rank
of cornet. He received, however, no appointment to Kutúzov’s staff despite all
Anna Mikháylovna’s endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pávlovna’s
reception Anna Mikháylovna returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich
relations, the Rostóvs, with whom she stayed when in the town and where her
darling Bóry, who had only just entered a regiment of the line and was being at
once transferred to the Guards as a cornet, had been educated from childhood
and lived for years at a time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth
of August, and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to
join them on the march to Radzivílov.
It was St. Natalia’s day and the name day of two of the Rostóvs—the mother
and the youngest daughter—both named Nataly. Ever since the morning,
carriages with six horses had been coming and going continually, bringing
visitors to the Countess Rostóva’s big house on the Povarskáya, so well known
to all Moscow. The countess herself and her handsome eldest daughter were in
the drawing room with the visitors who came to congratulate, and who
constantly succeeded one another in relays.
The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental type of
face, evidently worn out with childbearing—she had had twelve. A languor of
motion and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a distinguished air which
inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikháylovna Drubetskáya, who as a member of
the household was also seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and
entertain the visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not
considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. The count met the
guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.
“I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher,” or “ma chère”—he called
everyone without exception and without the slightest variation in his tone, “my
dear,” whether they were above or below him in rank—“I thank you for myself
and for our two dear ones whose name day we are keeping. But mind you come
to dinner or I shall be offended, ma chère! On behalf of the whole family I beg
you to come, mon cher!” These words he repeated to everyone without
exception or variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful, clean-
shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same quick, repeated
bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned to one of those who were
still in the drawing room, drew a chair toward him or her, and jauntily spreading
out his legs and putting his hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys
life and knows how to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises
about the weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and
sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a man weary
but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see some visitors off and,
stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald patch, also asked them to dinner.
Sometimes on his way back from the anteroom he would pass through the
conservatory and pantry into the large marble dining hall, where tables were
being set out for eighty people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing
in silver and china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would
call Dmítri Vasílevich, a man of good family and the manager of all his affairs,
and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table would say: “Well, Dmítri,
you’ll see that things are all as they should be? That’s right! The great thing is
the serving, that’s it.” And with a complacent sigh he would return to the
drawing room.
“Márya Lvóvna Karágina and her daughter!” announced the countess’ gigantic
footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The countess reflected a
moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with her husband’s portrait on it.
“I’m quite worn out by these callers. However, I’ll see her and no more. She is
so affected. Ask her in,” she said to the footman in a sad voice, as if saying:
“Very well, finish me off.”
A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling daughter,
entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.
“Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child ... at the
Razumóvski’s ball ... and Countess Apráksina ... I was so delighted...” came the
sounds of animated feminine voices, interrupting one another and mingling with
the rustling of dresses and the scraping of chairs. Then one of those
conversations began which last out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a
rustle of dresses and say, “I am so delighted... Mamma’s health... and Countess
Apráksina...” and then, again rustling, pass into the anteroom, put on cloaks or
mantles, and drive away. The conversation was on the chief topic of the day: the
illness of the wealthy and celebrated beau of Catherine’s day, Count Bezúkhov,
and about his illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at
Anna Pávlovna’s reception.
“I am so sorry for the poor count,” said the visitor. “He is in such bad health,
and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill him!”
“What is that?” asked the countess as if she did not know what the visitor
alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of Count Bezúkhov’s
distress some fifteen times.
“That’s what comes of a modern education,” exclaimed the visitor. “It seems
that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as he liked, now in
Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible things that he has been expelled
by the police.”
“You don’t say so!” replied the countess.
“He chose his friends badly,” interposed Anna Mikháylovna. “Prince Vasíli’s
son, he, and a certain Dólokhov have, it is said, been up to heaven only knows
what! And they have had to suffer for it. Dólokhov has been degraded to the
ranks and Bezúkhov’s son sent back to Moscow. Anatole Kurágin’s father
managed somehow to get his son’s affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out
of Petersburg.”
“But what have they been up to?” asked the countess.
“They are regular brigands, especially Dólokhov,” replied the visitor. “He is a
son of Márya Ivánovna Dólokhova, such a worthy woman, but there, just fancy!
Those three got hold of a bear somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it
to visit some actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men
do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear into the
Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on
his back!”
“What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!” shouted the
count, dying with laughter.
“Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?”
Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
“It was all they could do to rescue the poor man,” continued the visitor. “And
to think it is Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov’s son who amuses himself in this
sensible manner! And he was said to be so well educated and clever. This is all
that his foreign education has done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one
will receive him, in spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but
I quite declined: I have my daughters to consider.”
“Why do you say this young man is so rich?” asked the countess, turning
away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of inattention. “His children are
all illegitimate. I think Pierre also is illegitimate.”
The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
“I should think he has a score of them.”
Princess Anna Mikháylovna intervened in the conversation, evidently wishing
to show her connections and knowledge of what went on in society.
“The fact of the matter is,” said she significantly, and also in a half whisper,
“everyone knows Count Cyril’s reputation.... He has lost count of his children,
but this Pierre was his favorite.”
“How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!” remarked the
countess. “I have never seen a handsomer man.”
“He is very much altered now,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “Well, as I was
saying, Prince Vasíli is the next heir through his wife, but the count is very fond
of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to the Emperor about him; so that
in the case of his death—and he is so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr.
Lorrain has come from Petersburg—no one knows who will inherit his immense
fortune, Pierre or Prince Vasíli. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I
know it all very well for Prince Vasíli told me himself. Besides, Cyril
Vladímirovich is my mother’s second cousin. He’s also my Bóry’s godfather,”
she added, as if she attached no importance at all to the fact.
“Prince Vasíli arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on some
inspection business,” remarked the visitor.
“Yes, but between ourselves,” said the princess, “that is a pretext. The fact is
he has come to see Count Cyril Vladímirovich, hearing how ill he is.”
“But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke,” said the count; and
seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the young ladies. “I
can just imagine what a funny figure that policeman cut!”
And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly form again
shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who always eats well and, in
particular, drinks well. “So do come and dine with us!” he said.
CHAPTER XI
Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably, but not
concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they now rose and took
their leave. The visitor’s daughter was already smoothing down her dress with an
inquiring look at her mother, when suddenly from the next room were heard the
footsteps of boys and girls running to the door and the noise of a chair falling
over, and a girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin
frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was evident that
she had not intended her flight to bring her so far. Behind her in the doorway
appeared a student with a crimson coat collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of
fifteen, and a plump rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.
The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his arms wide
and threw them round the little girl who had run in.
“Ah, here she is!” he exclaimed laughing. “My pet, whose name day it is. My
dear pet!”
“Ma chère, there is a time for everything,” said the countess with feigned
severity. “You spoil her, Ilyá,” she added, turning to her husband.
“How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name day,”
said the visitor. “What a charming child,” she added, addressing the mother.
This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life—with childish
bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her bodice, with black curls
tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in
low slippers—was just at that charming age when a girl is no longer a child,
though the child is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to
hide her flushed face in the lace of her mother’s mantilla—not paying the least
attention to her severe remark—and began to laugh. She laughed, and in
fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she produced from the
folds of her frock.
“Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see...” was all Natásha managed to
utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother and burst
into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor could not help
joining in.
“Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you,” said the mother,
pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and turning to the visitor
she added: “She is my youngest girl.”
Natásha, raising her face for a moment from her mother’s mantilla, glanced up
at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.
The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it necessary to
take some part in it.
“Tell me, my dear,” said she to Natásha, “is Mimi a relation of yours? A
daughter, I suppose?”
Natásha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension to childish things. She
did not reply, but looked at her seriously.
Meanwhile the younger generation: Borís, the officer, Anna Mikháylovna’s
son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count’s eldest son; Sónya, the count’s
fifteen-year-old niece, and little Pétya, his youngest boy, had all settled down in
the drawing room and were obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of
decorum the excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the
back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation
had been more amusing than the drawing room talk of society scandals, the
weather, and Countess Apráksina. Now and then they glanced at one another,
hardly able to suppress their laughter.
The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood, were
of the same age and both handsome fellows, though not alike. Borís was tall and
fair, and his calm and handsome face had regular, delicate features. Nicholas was
short with curly hair and an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing
on his upper lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm.
Nicholas blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find
something to say, but failed. Borís on the contrary at once found his footing, and
related quietly and humorously how he had known that doll Mimi when she was
still quite a young lady, before her nose was broken; how she had aged during
the five years he had known her, and how her head had cracked right across the
skull. Having said this he glanced at Natásha. She turned away from him and
glanced at her younger brother, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with
suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she jumped up and
rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet would carry her. Borís did
not laugh.
“You were meaning to go out, weren’t you, Mamma? Do you want the
carriage?” he asked his mother with a smile.
“Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready,” she answered, returning his smile.
Borís quietly left the room and went in search of Natásha. The plump boy ran
after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been disturbed.
CHAPTER XII
The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting the
young lady visitor and the countess’ eldest daughter (who was four years older
than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were Nicholas and
Sónya, the niece. Sónya was a slender little brunette with a tender look in her
eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her
head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her
slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her
movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain
coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten
which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it
proper to show an interest in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of
herself her eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going
to join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile could not
for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had
settled down only to spring up with more energy and again play with her cousin
as soon as they too could, like Natásha and Borís, escape from the drawing
room.
“Ah yes, my dear,” said the count, addressing the visitor and pointing to
Nicholas, “his friend Borís has become an officer, and so for friendship’s sake he
is leaving the university and me, his old father, and entering the military service,
my dear. And there was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives
Department! Isn’t that friendship?” remarked the count in an inquiring tone.
“But they say that war has been declared,” replied the visitor.
“They’ve been saying so a long while,” said the count, “and they’ll say so
again and again, and that will be the end of it. My dear, there’s friendship for
you,” he repeated. “He’s joining the hussars.”
The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
“It’s not at all from friendship,” declared Nicholas, flaring up and turning
away as if from a shameful aspersion. “It is not from friendship at all; I simply
feel that the army is my vocation.”
He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were both
regarding him with a smile of approbation.
“Schubert, the colonel of the Pávlograd Hussars, is dining with us today. He
has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him. It can’t be helped!”
said the count, shrugging his shoulders and speaking playfully of a matter that
evidently distressed him.
“I have already told you, Papa,” said his son, “that if you don’t wish to let me
go, I’ll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except in the army; I am not a
diplomat or a government clerk.—I don’t know how to hide what I feel.” As he
spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sónya
and the young lady visitor.
The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any moment to
start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.
“All right, all right!” said the old count. “He always flares up! This
Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he rose from an
ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,” he added, not noticing his
visitor’s sarcastic smile.
The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karágina turned to young
Rostóv.
“What a pity you weren’t at the Arkhárovs’ on Thursday. It was so dull
without you,” said she, giving him a tender smile.
The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish smile, and
engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation without at all noticing
that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart of Sónya, who blushed and
smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him
a passionately angry glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain
the artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas’
animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the conversation, and then
with a distressed face left the room to find Sónya.
“How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their sleeves!” said
Anna Mikháylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out. “Cousinage—
dangereux voisinage,” * she added.
* Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
“Yes,” said the countess when the brightness these young people had brought
into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no one had put but
which was always in her mind, “and how much suffering, how much anxiety one
has had to go through that we might rejoice in them now! And yet really the
anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially
just at this age, so dangerous both for girls and boys.”
“It all depends on the bringing up,” remarked the visitor.
“Yes, you’re quite right,” continued the countess. “Till now I have always,
thank God, been my children’s friend and had their full confidence,” said she,
repeating the mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have
no secrets from them. “I know I shall always be my daughters’ first confidante,
and that if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy
can’t help it), he will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men.”
“Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters,” chimed in the count, who
always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding that
everything was splendid. “Just fancy: wants to be an hussar. What’s one to do,
my dear?”
“What a charming creature your younger girl is,” said the visitor; “a little
volcano!”
“Yes, a regular volcano,” said the count. “Takes after me! And what a voice
she has; though she’s my daughter, I tell the truth when I say she’ll be a singer, a
second Salomoni! We have engaged an Italian to give her lessons.”
“Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train it at that
age.”
“Oh no, not at all too young!” replied the count. “Why, our mothers used to be
married at twelve or thirteen.”
“And she’s in love with Borís already. Just fancy!” said the countess with a
gentle smile, looking at Borís and went on, evidently concerned with a thought
that always occupied her: “Now you see if I were to be severe with her and to
forbid it ... goodness knows what they might be up to on the sly” (she meant that
they would be kissing), “but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come
running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I
spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister I was stricter.”
“Yes, I was brought up quite differently,” remarked the handsome elder
daughter, Countess Véra, with a smile.
But the smile did not enhance Véra’s beauty as smiles generally do; on the
contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant, expression. Véra was
good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a
pleasant voice; what she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say,
everyone—the visitors and countess alike—turned to look at her as if wondering
why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.
“People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to make
something exceptional of them,” said the visitor.
“What’s the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too clever
with Véra,” said the count. “Well, what of that? She’s turned out splendidly all
the same,” he added, winking at Véra.
The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.
“What manners! I thought they would never go,” said the countess, when she
had seen her guests out.
CHAPTER XIII
When Natásha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation in the
drawing room, waiting for Borís to come out. She was already growing
impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming at once, when she
heard the young man’s discreet steps approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At
this Natásha dashed swiftly among the flower tubs and hid there.
Borís paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a little dust
from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined his handsome
face. Natásha, very still, peered out from her ambush, waiting to see what he
would do. He stood a little while before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the
other door. Natásha was about to call him but changed her mind. “Let him look
for me,” thought she. Hardly had Borís gone than Sónya, flushed, in tears, and
muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natásha checked her first impulse to
run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching—as under an invisible
cap—to see what went on in the world. She was experiencing a new and peculiar
pleasure. Sónya, muttering to herself, kept looking round toward the drawing
room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.
“Sónya, what is the matter with you? How can you?” said he, running up to
her.
“It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!” sobbed Sónya.
“Ah, I know what it is.”
“Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!”
“Só-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that, for a
mere fancy?” said Nicholas taking her hand.
Sónya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natásha, not stirring and
scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes. “What will
happen now?” thought she.
“Sónya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are everything!” said
Nicholas. “And I will prove it to you.”
“I don’t like you to talk like that.”
“Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sónya!” He drew her to him and kissed
her.
“Oh, how nice,” thought Natásha; and when Sónya and Nicholas had gone out
of the conservatory she followed and called Borís to her.
“Borís, come here,” said she with a sly and significant look. “I have
something to tell you. Here, here!” and she led him into the conservatory to the
place among the tubs where she had been hiding.
Borís followed her, smiling.
“What is the something?” asked he.
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown down
on one of the tubs, picked it up.
“Kiss the doll,” said she.
Borís looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not reply.
“Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,” said she, and went further in
among the plants and threw down the doll. “Closer, closer!” she whispered.
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and fear
appeared on her flushed face.
“And me? Would you like to kiss me?” she whispered almost inaudibly,
glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from
excitement.
Borís blushed.
“How funny you are!” he said, bending down to her and blushing still more,
but he waited and did nothing.
Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so that
both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing back her
hair, kissed him full on the lips.
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs and
stood, hanging her head.
“Natásha,” he said, “you know that I love you, but....”
“You are in love with me?” Natásha broke in.
“Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that.... In another four years ... then I
will ask for your hand.”
Natásha considered.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted on her slender little fingers.
“All right! Then it’s settled?”
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
“Settled!” replied Borís.
“Forever?” said the little girl. “Till death itself?”
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining
sitting room.
CHAPTER XIV
After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave orders to
admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came
“to congratulate.” The countess wished to have a tête-à-tête talk with the friend
of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikháylovna, whom she had not seen properly
since she returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikháylovna, with her tear-worn but
pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
“With you I will be quite frank,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “There are not
many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your friendship.”
Anna Mikháylovna looked at Véra and paused. The countess pressed her
friend’s hand.
“Véra,” she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a favorite, “how
is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see you are not wanted here? Go to the
other girls, or...”
The handsome Véra smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.
“If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,” she replied as she
rose to go to her own room.
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one pair at
each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sónya was sitting close to
Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the first he had ever written.
Borís and Natásha were at the other window and ceased talking when Véra
entered. Sónya and Natásha looked at Véra with guilty, happy faces.
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but apparently the
sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Véra.
“How often have I asked you not to take my things?” she said. “You have a
room of your own,” and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
“In a minute, in a minute,” he said, dipping his pen.
“You always manage to do things at the wrong time,” continued Véra. “You
came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed of you.”
Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one
replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the room with
the inkstand in her hand.
“And at your age what secrets can there be between Natásha and Borís, or
between you two? It’s all nonsense!”
“Now, Véra, what does it matter to you?” said Natásha in defense, speaking
very gently.
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to everyone.
“Very silly,” said Véra. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”
“All have secrets of their own,” answered Natásha, getting warmer. “We don’t
interfere with you and Berg.”
“I should think not,” said Véra, “because there can never be anything wrong
in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are behaving with Borís.”
“Natálya Ilyníchna behaves very well to me,” remarked Borís. “I have nothing
to complain of.”
“Don’t, Borís! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome,” said Natásha
in a mortified voice that trembled slightly. (She used the word “diplomat,” which
was just then much in vogue among the children, in the special sense they
attached to it.) “Why does she bother me?” And she added, turning to Véra,
“You’ll never understand it, because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no
heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more” (this nickname, bestowed
on Véra by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), “and your greatest pleasure
is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you please,” she
finished quickly.
“I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors...”
“Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,” put in Nicholas—“said unpleasant
things to everyone and upset them. Let’s go to the nursery.”
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
“The unpleasant things were said to me,” remarked Véra, “I said none to
anyone.”
“Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!” shouted laughing voices through
the door.
The handsome Véra, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant effect on
everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been said to her, went to
the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at her own handsome
face she seemed to become still colder and calmer.
“No, Peter Nikoláevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry the advantages
are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own position now, Peter
Nikoláevich...”
Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His conversation
always related entirely to himself; he would remain calm and silent when the
talk related to any topic that had no direct bearing on himself. He could remain
silent for hours without being at all put out of countenance himself or making
others uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned himself he
would begin to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.
“Consider my position, Peter Nikoláevich. Were I in the cavalry I should get
not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even with the rank of
lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and thirty,” said he, looking at
Shinshín and the count with a joyful, pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him
that his success must always be the chief desire of everyone else.
“Besides that, Peter Nikoláevich, by exchanging into the Guards I shall be in a
more prominent position,” continued Berg, “and vacancies occur much more
frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what can be done with two
hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a little aside and to send
something to my father,” he went on, emitting a smoke ring.
“La balance y est... * A German knows how to skin a flint, as the proverb
says,” remarked Shinshín, moving his pipe to the other side of his mouth and
winking at the count.
* So that squares matters.
The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that Shinshín was
talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference, continued to
explain how by exchanging into the Guards he had already gained a step on his
old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime the company commander
might get killed and he, as senior in the company, might easily succeed to the
post; how popular he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his
father was with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem
to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests. But all he said was so
prettily sedate, and the naïveté of his youthful egotism was so obvious, that he
disarmed his hearers.
“Well, my boy, you’ll get along wherever you go—foot or horse—that I’ll
warrant,” said Shinshín, patting him on the shoulder and taking his feet off the
sofa.
Berg smiled joyously. The count, followed by his guests, went into the
drawing room.
It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests,
expecting the summons to zakúska, * avoid engaging in any long conversation
but think it necessary to move about and talk, in order to show that they are not
at all impatient for their food. The host and hostess look toward the door, and
now and then glance at one another, and the visitors try to guess from these
glances who, or what, they are waiting for—some important relation who has not
yet arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready.
* Hors d’oeuvres.
Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the middle of
the drawing room on the first chair he had come across, blocking the way for
everyone. The countess tried to make him talk, but he went on naïvely looking
around through his spectacles as if in search of somebody and answered all her
questions in monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not
notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked
with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy,
modest fellow could have played such a prank on a policeman.
“You have only lately arrived?” the countess asked him.
“Oui, madame,” replied he, looking around him.
“You have not yet seen my husband?”
“Non, madame.” He smiled quite inappropriately.
“You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it’s very interesting.”
“Very interesting.”
The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikháylovna. The latter
understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and sitting
down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he answered her, as he
had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other guests were all conversing
with one another. “The Razumóvskis... It was charming... You are very kind...
Countess Apráksina...” was heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into
the ballroom.
“Márya Dmítrievna?” came her voice from there.
“Herself,” came the answer in a rough voice, and Márya Dmítrievna entered
the room.
All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very oldest
rose. Márya Dmítrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout, holding high her fifty-
year-old head with its gray curls, she stood surveying the guests, and leisurely
arranged her wide sleeves as if rolling them up. Márya Dmítrievna always spoke
in Russian.
“Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her
children,” she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all others.
“Well, you old sinner,” she went on, turning to the count who was kissing her
hand, “you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your
dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just see how these nestlings are growing
up,” and she pointed to the girls. “You must look for husbands for them whether
you like it or not....”
“Well,” said she, “how’s my Cossack?” (Márya Dmítrievna always called
Natásha a Cossack) and she stroked the child’s arm as she came up fearless and
gay to kiss her hand. “I know she’s a scamp of a girl, but I like her.”
She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule and,
having given them to the rosy Natásha, who beamed with the pleasure of her
saint’s-day fete, turned away at once and addressed herself to Pierre.
“Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit,” said she, assuming a soft high tone of voice.
“Come here, my friend...” and she ominously tucked up her sleeves still higher.
Pierre approached, looking at her in a childlike way through his spectacles.
“Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell your father
the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it’s my evident duty.” She
paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to follow, for this was clearly
only a prelude.
“A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed and he
amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame, sir, for shame! It
would be better if you went to the war.”
She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly keep from
laughing.
“Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?” said Márya Dmítrievna.
The count went in first with Márya Dmítrievna, the countess followed on the
arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them because Nicholas was
to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna Mikháylovna with Shinshín.
Berg gave his arm to Véra. The smiling Julie Karágina went in with Nicholas.
After them other couples followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all
the children, tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began
moving about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the guests
settled down in their places. Then the strains of the count’s household band were
replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the voices of visitors, and the soft
steps of the footmen. At one end of the table sat the countess with Márya
Dmítrievna on her right and Anna Mikháylovna on her left, the other lady
visitors were farther down. At the other end sat the count, with the hussar
colonel on his left and Shinshín and the other male visitors on his right. Midway
down the long table on one side sat the grown-up young people: Véra beside
Berg, and Pierre beside Borís; and on the other side, the children, tutors, and
governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit vases, the count kept
glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and busily filled
his neighbors’ glasses, not neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without
omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the
pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their redness to
contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies’ end an even chatter of
voices was heard all the time, at the men’s end the voices sounded louder and
louder, especially that of the colonel of hussars who, growing more and more
flushed, ate and drank so much that the count held him up as a pattern to the
other guests. Berg with tender smiles was saying to Véra that love is not an
earthly but a heavenly feeling. Borís was telling his new friend Pierre who the
guests were and exchanging glances with Natásha, who was sitting opposite.
Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a great deal. Of the two
soups he chose turtle with savory patties and went on to the game without
omitting a single dish or one of the wines. These latter the butler thrust
mysteriously forward, wrapped in a napkin, from behind the next man’s
shoulders and whispered: “Dry Madeira”... “Hungarian”... or “Rhine wine” as
the case might be. Of the four crystal glasses engraved with the count’s
monogram that stood before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank
with enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests.
Natásha, who sat opposite, was looking at Borís as girls of thirteen look at the
boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the first time. Sometimes that
same look fell on Pierre, and that funny lively little girl’s look made him inclined
to laugh without knowing why.
Nicholas sat at some distance from Sónya, beside Julie Karágina, to whom he
was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sónya wore a company smile
but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned pale, now blushed and
strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas and Julie were saying to one
another. The governess kept looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any
slight that might be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to
remember all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full
description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended
when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned,
trying to appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was mortified because
no one would understand that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness
that he wanted it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.
CHAPTER XIX
At the men’s end of the table the talk grew more and more animated. The
colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared in Petersburg
and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day been forwarded by
courier to the commander in chief.
“And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?” remarked Shinshín.
“He has stopped Austria’s cackle and I fear it will be our turn next.”
The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted to the
service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshín’s remark.
“It is for the reasson, my goot sir,” said he, speaking with a German accent,
“for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He declares in ze manifessto zat he
cannot fiew wiz indifference ze danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and
dignity of ze Empire as vell as ze sanctity of its alliances...” he spoke this last
word with particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.
Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he repeated
from the opening words of the manifesto:
... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor’s sole and absolute aim—to
establish peace in Europe on firm foundations—has now decided him to
despatch part of the army abroad and to create a new condition for the
attainment of that purpose.
“Zat, my dear sir, is vy...” he concluded, drinking a tumbler of wine with
dignity and looking to the count for approval.
“Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* ‘Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but turn
spindles at home!’?” said Shinshín, puckering his brows and smiling. “Cela nous
convient à merveille.*(2) Suvórov now—he knew what he was about; yet they
beat him à plate couture,*(3) and where are we to find Suvórovs now? Je vous
demande un peu,” *(4) said he, continually changing from French to Russian.
*Do you know the proverb?
*(3) Hollow.
“Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!” said the colonel, thumping the
table; “and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen all vill pe vell. And ve must
discuss it as little as po-o-ossible”... he dwelt particularly on the word possible...
“as po-o-ossible,” he ended, again turning to the count. “Zat is how ve old
hussars look at it, and zere’s an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a
young hussar, how do you judge of it?” he added, addressing Nicholas, who
when he heard that the war was being discussed had turned from his partner with
eyes and ears intent on the colonel.
“I am quite of your opinion,” replied Nicholas, flaming up, turning his plate
round and moving his wineglasses about with as much decision and desperation
as though he were at that moment facing some great danger. “I am convinced
that we Russians must die or conquer,” he concluded, conscious—as were others
—after the words were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and
emphatic for the occasion and were therefore awkward.
“What you said just now was splendid!” said his partner Julie.
Sónya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them and down to
her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.
Pierre listened to the colonel’s speech and nodded approvingly.
“That’s fine,” said he.
“The young man’s a real hussar!” shouted the colonel, again thumping the
table.
“What are you making such a noise about over there?” Márya Dmítrievna’s
deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the table. “What are you
thumping the table for?” she demanded of the hussar, “and why are you exciting
yourself? Do you think the French are here?”
“I am speaking ze truce,” replied the hussar with a smile.
“It’s all about the war,” the count shouted down the table. “You know my
son’s going, Márya Dmítrievna? My son is going.”
“I have four sons in the army but still I don’t fret. It is all in God’s hands. You
may die in your bed or God may spare you in a battle,” replied Márya
Dmítrievna’s deep voice, which easily carried the whole length of the table.
“That’s true!”
Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies’ at the one end and the
men’s at the other.
“You won’t ask,” Natásha’s little brother was saying; “I know you won’t ask!”
“I will,” replied Natásha.
Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She half rose,
by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to what was coming, and
turning to her mother:
“Mamma!” rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice, audible the
whole length of the table.
“What is it?” asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her daughter’s face
that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her sternly with a threatening and
forbidding movement of her head.
The conversation was hushed.
“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” and Natásha’s voice sounded
still more firm and resolute.
The countess tried to frown, but could not. Márya Dmítrievna shook her fat
finger.
“Cossack!” she said threateningly.
Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the elders.
“You had better take care!” said the countess.
“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” Natásha again cried boldly,
with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good part.
Sónya and fat little Pétya doubled up with laughter.
“You see! I have asked,” whispered Natásha to her little brother and to Pierre,
glancing at him again.
“Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,” said Márya Dmítrievna.
Natásha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even Márya
Dmítrievna.
“Márya Dmítrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t like ice cream.”
“Carrot ices.”
“No! What kind, Márya Dmítrievna? What kind?” she almost screamed; “I
want to know!”
Márya Dmítrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the guests
joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Márya Dmítrievna’s answer but at the
incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had dared to treat Márya
Dmítrievna in this fashion.
Natásha only desisted when she had been told that there would be pineapple
ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band again struck up, the
count and countess kissed, and the guests, leaving their seats, went up to
“congratulate” the countess, and reached across the table to clink glasses with
the count, with the children, and with one another. Again the footmen rushed
about, chairs scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered but with
redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing room and to the count’s study.
CHAPTER XX
The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the count’s
visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms, some in the sitting
room, some in the library.
The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from
dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything. The young
people, at the countess’ instigation, gathered round the clavichord and harp. Julie
by general request played first. After she had played a little air with variations on
the harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natásha and Nicholas,
who were noted for their musical talent, to sing something. Natásha, who was
treated as though she were grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the
same time felt shy.
“What shall we sing?” she said.
“‘The Brook,’” suggested Nicholas.
“Well, then, let’s be quick. Borís, come here,” said Natásha. “But where is
Sónya?”
She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room ran to look
for her.
Running into Sónya’s room and not finding her there, Natásha ran to the
nursery, but Sónya was not there either. Natásha concluded that she must be on
the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage was the place of mourning for
the younger female generation in the Rostóv household. And there in fact was
Sónya lying face downward on Nurse’s dirty feather bed on the top of the chest,
crumpling her gauzy pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender
fingers, and sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook.
Natásha’s face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint’s day, suddenly
changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad neck
and the corners of her mouth drooped.
“Sónya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!” And Natásha’s
large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she began to wail like a
baby without knowing why, except that Sónya was crying. Sónya tried to lift her
head to answer but could not, and hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natásha
wept, sitting on the blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an
effort Sónya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.
“Nicholas is going away in a week’s time, his... papers... have come... he told
me himself... but still I should not cry,” and she showed a paper she held in her
hand—with the verses Nicholas had written, “still, I should not cry, but you
can’t... no one can understand... what a soul he has!”
And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.
“It’s all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and Borís also,” she
went on, gaining a little strength; “he is nice... there are no difficulties in your
way.... But Nicholas is my cousin... one would have to... the Metropolitan
himself... and even then it can’t be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma”
(Sónya looked upon the countess as her mother and called her so) “that I am
spoiling Nicholas’ career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God is
my witness,” and she made the sign of the cross, “I love her so much, and all of
you, only Véra... And what for? What have I done to her? I am so grateful to you
that I would willingly sacrifice everything, only I have nothing....”
Sónya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in the
feather bed. Natásha began consoling her, but her face showed that she
understood all the gravity of her friend’s trouble.
“Sónya,” she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true reason of her
friend’s sorrow, “I’m sure Véra has said something to you since dinner? Hasn’t
she?”
“Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some others, and she
found them on my table and said she’d show them to Mamma, and that I was
ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him to marry me, but that he’ll
marry Julie. You see how he’s been with her all day... Natásha, what have I done
to deserve it?...”
And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natásha lifted her up,
hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began comforting her.
“Sónya, don’t believe her, darling! Don’t believe her! Do you remember how
we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting room after supper? Why, we
settled how everything was to be. I don’t quite remember how, but don’t you
remember that it could all be arranged and how nice it all was? There’s Uncle
Shinshín’s brother has married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins,
you know. And Borís says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all
about it. And he is so clever and so good!” said Natásha. “Don’t you cry, Sónya,
dear love, darling Sónya!” and she kissed her and laughed. “Véra’s spiteful;
never mind her! And all will come right and she won’t say anything to Mamma.
Nicholas will tell her himself, and he doesn’t care at all for Julie.”
Natásha kissed her on the hair.
Sónya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it seemed ready
to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin playing with the ball of
worsted as a kitten should.
“Do you think so?... Really? Truly?” she said, quickly smoothing her frock
and hair.
“Really, truly!” answered Natásha, pushing in a crisp lock that had strayed
from under her friend’s plaits.
Both laughed.
“Well, let’s go and sing ‘The Brook.’”
“Come along!”
“Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!” said Natásha,
stopping suddenly. “I feel so happy!”
And she set off at a run along the passage.
Sónya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran after Natásha
down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face and light, joyous steps.
At the visitors’ request the young people sang the quartette, “The Brook,” with
which everyone was delighted. Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:
At nighttime in the moon’s fair glow
How sweet, as fancies wander free,
To feel that in this world there’s one
Who still is thinking but of thee!
He had not finished the last verse before the young people began to get ready
to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and the coughing of the
musicians were heard from the gallery.
Pierre was sitting in the drawing room where Shinshín had engaged him, as a
man recently returned from abroad, in a political conversation in which several
others joined but which bored Pierre. When the music began Natásha came in
and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing and blushing:
“Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers.”
“I am afraid of mixing the figures,” Pierre replied; “but if you will be my
teacher...” And lowering his big arm he offered it to the slender little girl.
While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning up,
Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natásha was perfectly happy; she was
dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was sitting in a
conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady. She had a fan in her
hand that one of the ladies had given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a
society woman (heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked
with her partner, fanning herself and smiling over the fan.
“Dear, dear! Just look at her!” exclaimed the countess as she crossed the
ballroom, pointing to Natásha.
Natásha blushed and laughed.
“Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised at?”
In the midst of the third écossaise there was a clatter of chairs being pushed
back in the sitting room where the count and Márya Dmítrievna had been
playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and older visitors.
They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long, and replacing their purses
and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First came Márya Dmítrievna and the
count, both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony
somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Márya Dmítrievna. He drew
himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last
figure of the écossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians and
shouted up to their gallery, addressing the first violin:
“Semën! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?”
This was the count’s favorite dance, which he had danced in his youth.
(Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)
“Look at Papa!” shouted Natásha to the whole company, and quite forgetting
that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her curly head to her
knees and made the whole room ring with her laughter.
And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure at the
jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout partner, Márya
Dmítrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened his shoulders, turned out his
toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by a smile that broadened his round face
more and more, prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the
provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a
merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were
suddenly filled by the domestic serfs—the men on one side and the women on
the other—who with beaming faces had come to see their master making merry.
“Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!” loudly remarked the nurse, as
she stood in one of the doorways.
The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did not want
to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her powerful arms hanging
down (she had handed her reticule to the countess), and only her stern but
handsome face really joined in the dance. What was expressed by the whole of
the count’s plump figure, in Márya Dmítrievna found expression only in her
more and more beaming face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more
and more into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness of
his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on his light
feet, Márya Dmítrievna produced no less impression by slight exertions—the
least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp her
foot—which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual severity. The
dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment’s
attention to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were
watching the count and Márya Dmítrievna. Natásha kept pulling everyone by
sleeve or dress, urging them to “look at Papa!” though as it was they never took
their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the dance the count, breathing
deeply, waved and shouted to the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and
faster; lightly, more lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round
Márya Dmítrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his partner
round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft foot backwards,
bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a wide sweep with his arm,
amid a thunder of applause and laughter led by Natásha. Both partners stood
still, breathing heavily and wiping their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
“That’s how we used to dance in our time, ma chère,” said the count.
“That was a Daniel Cooper!” exclaimed Márya Dmítrievna, tucking up her
sleeves and puffing heavily.
CHAPTER XXI
While in the Rostóvs’ ballroom the sixth anglaise was being danced, to a tune
in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen and cooks
were getting the supper, Count Bezúkhov had a sixth stroke. The doctors
pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession, communion was
administered to the dying man, preparations made for the sacrament of unction,
and in his house there was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such
moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid
whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important order for an
expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous
in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the count’s health, came himself that
evening to bid a last farewell to the celebrated grandee of Catherine’s court,
Count Bezúkhov.
The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up respectfully
when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an hour alone with the
dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their bows and trying to escape
as quickly as possible from the glances fixed on him by the doctors, clergy, and
relatives of the family. Prince Vasíli, who had grown thinner and paler during the
last few days, escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times
in low tones.
When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasíli sat down all alone on a
chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the other, leaning his elbow on
his knee and covering his face with his hand. After sitting so for a while he rose,
and, looking about him with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps
down the long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the eldest
princess.
Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous whispers,
and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying man’s room, grew
silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy at his door, which
creaked slightly when opened.
“The limits of human life ... are fixed and may not be o’erpassed,” said an old
priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was listening naïvely to his
words.
“I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?” asked the lady, adding the
priest’s clerical title, as if she had no opinion of her own on the subject.
“Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament,” replied the priest, passing his hand over
the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his bald head.
“Who was that? The Military Governor himself?” was being asked at the other
side of the room. “How young-looking he is!”
“Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes anyone. They
wished to administer the sacrament of unction.”
“I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times.”
The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes red from
weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a graceful pose
under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a table.
“Beautiful,” said the doctor in answer to a remark about the weather. “The
weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow one feels as if one were
in the country.”
“Yes, indeed,” replied the princess with a sigh. “So he may have something to
drink?”
Lorrain considered.
“Has he taken his medicine?”
“Yes.”
The doctor glanced at his watch.
“Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar,” and he
indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.
“Dere has neffer been a gase,” a German doctor was saying to an aide-de-
camp, “dat one liffs after de sird stroke.”
“And what a well-preserved man he was!” remarked the aide-de-camp. “And
who will inherit his wealth?” he added in a whisper.
“It von’t go begging,” replied the German with a smile.
Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second princess
went in with the drink she had prepared according to Lorrain’s instructions. The
German doctor went up to Lorrain.
“Do you think he can last till morning?” asked the German, addressing
Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.
Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger before his nose.
“Tonight, not later,” said he in a low voice, and he moved away with a
decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to understand and state
the patient’s condition.
Meanwhile Prince Vasíli had opened the door into the princess’ room.
In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning before the
icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt pastilles. The room
was crowded with small pieces of furniture, whatnots, cupboards, and little
tables. The quilt of a high, white feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A
small dog began to bark.
“Ah, is it you, cousin?”
She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely smooth that
it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and covered with varnish.
“Has anything happened?” she asked. “I am so terrified.”
“No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about business, Catiche,” *
muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on the chair she had just vacated.
“You have made the place warm, I must say,” he remarked. “Well, sit down: let’s
have a talk.”
*Catherine.
“I thought perhaps something had happened,” she said with her unchanging
stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the prince, she prepared to
listen.
“I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can’t.”
“Well, my dear?” said Prince Vasíli, taking her hand and bending it
downwards as was his habit.
It was plain that this “well?” referred to much that they both understood
without naming.
The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for her legs,
looked directly at Prince Vasíli with no sign of emotion in her prominent gray
eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up at the icons with a sigh. This
might have been taken as an expression of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness
and hope of resting before long. Prince Vasíli understood it as an expression of
weariness.
“And I?” he said; “do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn out as a post
horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a very serious talk.”
Prince Vasíli said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously, now on
one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant expression which was
never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes too seemed strange; at one
moment they looked impudently sly and at the next glanced round in alarm.
The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony hands,
looked attentively into Prince Vasíli’s eyes evidently resolved not to be the first
to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.
“Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semënovna,”
continued Prince Vasíli, returning to his theme, apparently not without an inner
struggle; “at such a moment as this one must think of everything. One must think
of the future, of all of you... I love you all, like children of my own, as you
know.”
The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the same dull
expression.
“And then of course my family has also to be considered,” Prince Vasíli went
on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at her. “You know,
Catiche, that we—you three sisters, Mámontov, and my wife—are the count’s
only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it is for you to talk or think of such
matters. It is no easier for me; but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be
prepared for anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count,” pointing
to his portrait, “definitely demanded that he should be called.”
Prince Vasíli looked questioningly at the princess, but could not make out
whether she was considering what he had just said or whether she was simply
looking at him.
“There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin,” she replied,
“and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow his noble soul
peacefully to leave this...”
“Yes, yes, of course,” interrupted Prince Vasíli impatiently, rubbing his bald
head and angrily pulling back toward him the little table that he had pushed
away. “But... in short, the fact is... you know yourself that last winter the count
made a will by which he left all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to
Pierre.”
“He has made wills enough!” quietly remarked the princess. “But he cannot
leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate.”
“But, my dear,” said Prince Vasíli suddenly, clutching the little table and
becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: “what if a letter has been
written to the Emperor in which the count asks for Pierre’s legitimation? Do you
understand that in consideration of the count’s services, his request would be
granted?...”
The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about the subject
under discussion than those they are talking with.
“I can tell you more,” continued Prince Vasíli, seizing her hand, “that letter
was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew of it. The only
question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, then as soon as all is over,” and
Prince Vasíli sighed to intimate what he meant by the words all is over, “and the
count’s papers are opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor,
and the petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything as the
legitimate son.”
“And our share?” asked the princess smiling ironically, as if anything might
happen, only not that.
“But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be the legal heir
to everything and you won’t get anything. You must know, my dear, whether the
will and letter were written, and whether they have been destroyed or not. And if
they have somehow been overlooked, you ought to know where they are, and
must find them, because...”
“What next?” the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and not changing
the expression of her eyes. “I am a woman, and you think we are all stupid; but I
know this: an illegitimate son cannot inherit... un bâtard!”* she added, as if
supposing that this translation of the word would effectively prove to Prince
Vasíli the invalidity of his contention.
* A bastard.
“Well, really, Catiche! Can’t you understand! You are so intelligent, how is it
you don’t see that if the count has written a letter to the Emperor begging him to
recognize Pierre as legitimate, it follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will
become Count Bezúkhov, and will then inherit everything under the will? And if
the will and letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing but the
consolation of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s’ensuit!* That’s certain.”
* And all that follows therefrom.
“I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and you, mon
cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool,” said the princess with the expression
women assume when they suppose they are saying something witty and stinging.
“My dear Princess Catherine Semënovna,” began Prince Vasíli impatiently, “I
came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about your interests as with a
kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I tell you for the tenth time that if
the letter to the Emperor and the will in Pierre’s favor are among the count’s
papers, then, my dear girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don’t
believe me, then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmítri Onúfrich”
(the family solicitor) “and he says the same.”
At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess’ ideas; her thin
lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her voice when she began
to speak passed through such transitions as she herself evidently did not expect.
“That would be a fine thing!” said she. “I never wanted anything and I don’t
now.”
She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.
“And this is gratitude—this is recognition for those who have sacrificed
everything for his sake!” she cried. “It’s splendid! Fine! I don’t want anything,
Prince.”
“Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters...” replied Prince
Vasíli.
But the princess did not listen to him.
“Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could expect nothing
but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and ingratitude—the blackest ingratitude—
in this house...”
“Do you or do you not know where that will is?” insisted Prince Vasíli, his
cheeks twitching more than ever.
“Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and sacrificed
myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has been intriguing!”
The princess wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand. She had the
air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole human race. She gave her
companion an angry glance.
“There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it was all done
casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was afterwards forgotten. Our
duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to ease his last moments by not letting
him commit this injustice, and not to let him die feeling that he is rendering
unhappy those who...”
“Who sacrificed everything for him,” chimed in the princess, who would
again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, “though he never could
appreciate it. No, mon cousin,” she added with a sigh, “I shall always remember
that in this world one must expect no reward, that in this world there is neither
honor nor justice. In this world one has to be cunning and cruel.”
“Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart.”
“No, I have a wicked heart.”
“I know your heart,” repeated the prince. “I value your friendship and wish
you to have as good an opinion of me. Don’t upset yourself, and let us talk
sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or be it but an hour.... Tell me all you
know about the will, and above all where it is. You must know. We will take it at
once and show it to the count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to
destroy it. You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his
wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help him and
you.”
“Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing—I know!” cried the
princess.
“That’s not the point, my dear.”
“It’s that protégé of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskáya, that Anna
Mikháylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the infamous, vile
woman!”
“Do not let us lose any time...”
“Ah, don’t talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here and told the
count such vile, disgraceful things about us, especially about Sophie—I can’t
repeat them—that it made the count quite ill and he would not see us for a whole
fortnight. I know it was then he wrote this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the
thing was invalid.”
“We’ve got to it at last—why did you not tell me about it sooner?”
“It’s in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,” said the princess,
ignoring his question. “Now I know! Yes; if I have a sin, a great sin, it is hatred
of that vile woman!” almost shrieked the princess, now quite changed. “And
what does she come worming herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of
my mind. The time will come!”
CHAPTER XXII
While these conversations were going on in the reception room and the
princess’ room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent for) and Anna
Mikháylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him) was driving into the
court of Count Bezúkhov’s house. As the wheels rolled softly over the straw
beneath the windows, Anna Mikháylovna, having turned with words of comfort
to her companion, realized that he was asleep in his corner and woke him up.
Rousing himself, Pierre followed Anna Mikháylovna out of the carriage, and
only then began to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited
him. He noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the back
door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two men, who looked
like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and hid in the shadow of the
wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed several other men of the same kind
hiding in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither Anna Mikháylovna
nor the footman nor the coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took
any notice of them. “It seems to be all right,” Pierre concluded, and followed
Anna Mikháylovna. She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone staircase,
calling to Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why
it was necessary for him to go to the count at all, still less why he had to go by
the back stairs, yet judging by Anna Mikháylovna’s air of assurance and haste,
Pierre concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the stairs they
were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying pails, came running
downstairs, their boots clattering. These men pressed close to the wall to let
Pierre and Anna Mikháylovna pass and did not evince the least surprise at seeing
them there.
“Is this the way to the princesses’ apartments?” asked Anna Mikháylovna of
one of them.
“Yes,” replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were now
permissible; “the door to the left, ma’am.”
“Perhaps the count did not ask for me,” said Pierre when he reached the
landing. “I’d better go to my own room.”
Anna Mikháylovna paused and waited for him to come up.
“Ah, my friend!” she said, touching his arm as she had done her son’s when
speaking to him that afternoon, “believe me I suffer no less than you do, but be a
man!”
“But really, hadn’t I better go away?” he asked, looking kindly at her over his
spectacles.
“Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done you. Think
that he is your father ... perhaps in the agony of death.” She sighed. “I have
loved you like a son from the first. Trust yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget
your interests.”
Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this had to be
grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikháylovna who was already
opening a door.
This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the princesses,
sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been in this part of the house
and did not even know of the existence of these rooms. Anna Mikháylovna,
addressing a maid who was hurrying past with a decanter on a tray as “my dear”
and “my sweet,” asked about the princess’ health and then led Pierre along a
stone passage. The first door on the left led into the princesses’ apartments. The
maid with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything in the
house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna Mikháylovna in
passing instinctively glanced into the room, where Prince Vasíli and the eldest
princess were sitting close together talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasíli drew
back with obvious impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture
of desperation slammed the door with all her might.
This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear depicted on Prince
Vasíli’s face so out of keeping with his dignity that Pierre stopped and glanced
inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Anna Mikháylovna evinced no
surprise, she only smiled faintly and sighed, as if to say that this was no more
than she had expected.
“Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests,” said she in reply to his
look, and went still faster along the passage.
Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what “watching
over his interests” meant, but he decided that all these things had to be. From the
passage they went into a large, dimly lit room adjoining the count’s reception
room. It was one of those sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only
from the front approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath,
and water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a
censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them. They
went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian windows
opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full length portrait of
Catherine the Great. The same people were still sitting here in almost the same
positions as before, whispering to one another. All became silent and turned to
look at the pale tear-worn Anna Mikháylovna as she entered, and at the big stout
figure of Pierre who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.
Anna Mikháylovna’s face expressed a consciousness that the decisive moment
had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg lady she now, keeping Pierre
close beside her, entered the room even more boldly than that afternoon. She felt
that as she brought with her the person the dying man wished to see, her own
admission was assured. Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and
noticing the count’s confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble,
not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and respectfully
received the blessing first of one and then of another priest.
“God be thanked that you are in time,” said she to one of the priests; “all we
relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man is the count’s son,” she
added more softly. “What a terrible moment!”
Having said this she went up to the doctor.
“Dear doctor,” said she, “this young man is the count’s son. Is there any
hope?”
The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his shoulders.
Anna Mikháylovna with just the same movement raised her shoulders and eyes,
almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved away from the doctor to Pierre. To
him, in a particularly respectful and tenderly sad voice, she said:
“Trust in His mercy!” and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit and wait for
her, she went silently toward the door that everyone was watching and it creaked
very slightly as she disappeared behind it.
Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly, moved
toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikháylovna had
disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned to him with
something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they whispered to
one another, casting significant looks at him with a kind of awe and even
servility. A deference such as he had never before received was shown him. A
strange lady, the one who had been talking to the priests, rose and offered him
her seat; an aide-de-camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the
doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to make way for
him. At first Pierre wished to take another seat so as not to trouble the lady, and
also to pick up the glove himself and to pass round the doctors who were not
even in his way; but all at once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he
was a person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone
expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to accept their services. He
took the glove in silence from the aide-de-camp, and sat down in the lady’s chair,
placing his huge hands symmetrically on his knees in the naïve attitude of an
Egyptian statue, and decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and
that in order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on his own
ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the will of those who were
guiding him.
Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasíli with head erect majestically
entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three stars on his breast. He
seemed to have grown thinner since the morning; his eyes seemed larger than
usual when he glanced round and noticed Pierre. He went up to him, took his
hand (a thing he never used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to
ascertain whether it was firmly fixed on.
“Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is well!” and he
turned to go.
But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: “How is...” and hesitated, not knowing
whether it would be proper to call the dying man “the count,” yet ashamed to
call him “father.”
“He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my friend...”
Pierre’s mind was in such a confused state that the word “stroke” suggested to
him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasíli in perplexity, and only
later grasped that a stroke was an attack of illness. Prince Vasíli said something
to Lorrain in passing and went through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk
well on tiptoe and his whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess
followed him, and the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the
door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, and at
last Anna Mikháylovna, still with the same expression, pale but resolute in the
discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly on the arm said:
“The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be administered.
Come.”
Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed that the
strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all followed him in, as
if there were now no further need for permission to enter that room.
CHAPTER XXIII
Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its walls
hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the columns, with
a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and on the other an
immense case containing icons, was brightly illuminated with red light like a
Russian church during evening service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long
invalid chair, and in that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly
changed, Pierre saw—covered to the waist by a bright green quilt—the familiar,
majestic figure of his father, Count Bezúkhov, with that gray mane of hair above
his broad forehead which reminded one of a lion, and the deep characteristically
noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his
large thick hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was lying palm
downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb, and an
old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in position. By the chair
stood the priests, their long hair falling over their magnificent glittering
vestments, with lighted tapers in their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting
the service. A little behind them stood the two younger princesses holding
handkerchiefs to their eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Catiche,
with a vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though
declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she glance round.
Anna Mikháylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and all-forgiving expression on her
face, stood by the door near the strange lady. Prince Vasíli in front of the door,
near the invalid chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on
the carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose, and was
crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward each time he
touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety and resignation to the
will of God. “If you do not understand these sentiments,” he seemed to be
saying, “so much the worse for you!”
Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants; the
men and women had separated as in church. All were silently crossing
themselves, and the reading of the church service, the subdued chanting of deep
bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and the shuffling of feet were the only
sounds that could be heard. Anna Mikháylovna, with an air of importance that
showed that she felt she quite knew what she was about, went across the room to
where Pierre was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by
observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand that held the
taper.
Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the mole, watched
him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and remained with it hidden
for awhile; then looking up and seeing Pierre she again began to laugh. She
evidently felt unable to look at him without laughing, but could not resist
looking at him: so to be out of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the
columns. In the midst of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased,
they whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding the count’s
hand got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikháylovna stepped
forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to Lorrain from behind her
back. The French doctor held no taper; he was leaning against one of the
columns in a respectful attitude implying that he, a foreigner, in spite of all
differences of faith, understood the full importance of the rite now being
performed and even approved of it. He now approached the sick man with the
noiseless step of one in full vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers raised
from the green quilt the hand that was free, and turning sideways felt the pulse
and reflected a moment. The sick man was given something to drink, there was a
stir around him, then the people resumed their places and the service continued.
During this interval Pierre noticed that Prince Vasíli left the chair on which he
had been leaning, and—with an air which intimated that he knew what he was
about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse for them—
did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined the eldest princess,
and moved with her to the side of the room where stood the high bedstead with
its silken hangings. On leaving the bed both Prince Vasíli and the princess passed
out by a back door, but returned to their places one after the other before the
service was concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to
the rest of what went on, having made up his mind once for all that what he saw
happening around him that evening was in some way essential.
The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest was heard
respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received the sacrament. The
dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as before. Around him everyone began
to stir: steps were audible and whispers, among which Anna Mikháylovna’s was
the most distinct.
Pierre heard her say:
“Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be impossible...”
The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and servants that
Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with its gray mane—which,
though he saw other faces as well, he had not lost sight of for a single moment
during the whole service. He judged by the cautious movements of those who
crowded round the invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were
moving him.
“Catch hold of my arm or you’ll drop him!” he heard one of the servants say
in a frightened whisper. “Catch hold from underneath. Here!” exclaimed
different voices; and the heavy breathing of the bearers and the shuffling of their
feet grew more hurried, as if the weight they were carrying were too much for
them.
As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikháylovna, passed the young man
he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the dying
man’s high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised by those who
were holding him under the armpits, and of his gray, curly, leonine head. This
head, with its remarkably broad brow and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual
mouth, and its cold, majestic expression, was not disfigured by the approach of
death. It was the same as Pierre remembered it three months before, when the
count had sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly
with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze fixed itself
upon nothing.
After a few minutes’ bustle beside the high bedstead, those who had carried
the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikháylovna touched Pierre’s hand and said,
“Come.” Pierre went with her to the bed on which the sick man had been laid in
a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony just completed. He lay with his head
propped high on the pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the green
silk quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing
straight at him, but with a look the significance of which could not be
understood by mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that as long as one
has eyes they must look somewhere, or it meant too much. Pierre hesitated, not
knowing what to do, and glanced inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikháylovna
made a hurried sign with her eyes, glancing at the sick man’s hand and moving
her lips as if to send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to
touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the large boned,
fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single muscle of the count’s face stirred.
Once more Pierre looked questioningly at Anna Mikháylovna to see what he was
to do next. Anna Mikháylovna with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside
the bed. Pierre obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna
Mikháylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naïvely symmetrical
pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that his stout and clumsy body
took up so much room and doing his utmost to look as small as possible. He
looked at the count, who still gazed at the spot where Pierre’s face had been
before he sat down. Anna Mikháylovna indicated by her attitude her
consciousness of the pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting
between the father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre
seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count’s face began
to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth was drawn to one side
(only now did Pierre realize how near death his father was), and from that
distorted mouth issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Anna Mikháylovna looked
attentively at the sick man’s eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed
first to Pierre, then to some drink, then named Prince Vasíli in an inquiring
whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the sick man showed
impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who stood constantly at the
head of the bed.
“Wants to turn on the other side,” whispered the servant, and got up to turn the
count’s heavy body toward the wall.
Pierre rose to help him.
While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back helplessly
and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward. Whether he noticed the look of
terror with which Pierre regarded that lifeless arm, or whether some other
thought flitted across his dying brain, at any rate he glanced at the refractory
arm, at Pierre’s terror-stricken face, and again at the arm, and on his face a
feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his features, that
seemed to deride his own helplessness. At sight of this smile Pierre felt an
unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling in his nose, and tears dimmed
his eyes. The sick man was turned on to his side with his face to the wall. He
sighed.
“He is dozing,” said Anna Mikháylovna, observing that one of the princesses
was coming to take her turn at watching. “Let us go.”
Pierre went out.
CHAPTER XXIV
There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasíli and the
eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of Catherine the Great and
talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre and his companion they became
silent, and Pierre thought he saw the princess hide something as she whispered:
“I can’t bear the sight of that woman.”
“Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room,” said Prince Vasíli to
Anna Mikháylovna. “Go and take something, my poor Anna Mikháylovna, or
you will not hold out.”
To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze below
the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikháylovna into the small drawing room.
“There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup of this delicious
Russian tea,” Lorrain was saying with an air of restrained animation as he stood
sipping tea from a delicate Chinese handleless cup before a table on which tea
and a cold supper were laid in the small circular room. Around the table all who
were at Count Bezúkhov’s house that night had gathered to fortify themselves.
Pierre well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors and
little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not know how to
dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the ladies who, as they passed
through in their ball dresses with diamonds and pearls on their bare shoulders,
looked at themselves in the brilliantly lighted mirrors which repeated their
reflections several times. Now this same room was dimly lighted by two candles.
On one small table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the
middle of the night a motley throng of people sat there, not merrymaking, but
somberly whispering, and betraying by every word and movement that they none
of them forgot what was happening and what was about to happen in the
bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though he would very much have liked to.
He looked inquiringly at his monitress and saw that she was again going on
tiptoe to the reception room where they had left Prince Vasíli and the eldest
princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a short interval
followed her. Anna Mikháylovna was standing beside the princess, and they
were both speaking in excited whispers.
“Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not necessary,”
said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the same state of excitement
as when she had slammed the door of her room.
“But, my dear princess,” answered Anna Mikháylovna blandly but
impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other from
passing, “won’t this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment when he needs
repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is already prepared...”
Prince Vasíli was seated in an easy chair in his familiar attitude, with one leg
crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which were so flabby that they looked
heavier below, were twitching violently; but he wore the air of a man little
concerned in what the two ladies were saying.
“Come, my dear Anna Mikháylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases. You know
how fond the count is of her.”
“I don’t even know what is in this paper,” said the younger of the two ladies,
addressing Prince Vasíli and pointing to an inlaid portfolio she held in her hand.
“All I know is that his real will is in his writing table, and this is a paper he has
forgotten....”
She tried to pass Anna Mikháylovna, but the latter sprang so as to bar her
path.
“I know, my dear, kind princess,” said Anna Mikháylovna, seizing the
portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily. “Dear princess, I
beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je vous en conjure...”
The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the portfolio were
the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the princess did speak, her
words would not be flattering to Anna Mikháylovna. Though the latter held on
tenaciously, her voice lost none of its honeyed firmness and softness.
“Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place in a family
consultation; is it not so, Prince?”
“Why don’t you speak, cousin?” suddenly shrieked the princess so loud that
those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. “Why do you remain
silent when heaven knows who permits herself to interfere, making a scene on
the very threshold of a dying man’s room? Intriguer!” she hissed viciously, and
tugged with all her might at the portfolio.
But Anna Mikháylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold on the
portfolio, and changed her grip.
Prince Vasíli rose. “Oh!” said he with reproach and surprise, “this is absurd!
Come, let go I tell you.”
The princess let go.
“And you too!”
But Anna Mikháylovna did not obey him.
“Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will go and ask him,
I!... does that satisfy you?”
“But, Prince,” said Anna Mikháylovna, “after such a solemn sacrament, allow
him a moment’s peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your opinion,” said she, turning to
the young man who, having come quite close, was gazing with astonishment at
the angry face of the princess which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching
cheeks of Prince Vasíli.
“Remember that you will answer for the consequences,” said Prince Vasíli
severely. “You don’t know what you are doing.”
“Vile woman!” shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
Mikháylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.
Prince Vasíli bent his head and spread out his hands.
At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so long and
which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and banged against the
wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed out wringing her hands.
“What are you doing!” she cried vehemently. “He is dying and you leave me
alone with him!”
Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikháylovna, stooping, quickly caught
up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. The eldest princess and
Prince Vasíli, recovering themselves, followed her. A few minutes later the eldest
sister came out with a pale hard face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre
her expression showed an irrepressible hatred.
“Yes, now you may be glad!” said she; “this is what you have been waiting
for.” And bursting into tears she hid her face in her handkerchief and rushed
from the room.
Prince Vasíli came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was sitting
and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre noticed that he was
pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in an ague.
“Ah, my friend!” said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there was in his
voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in it before. “How
often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am near sixty, dear
friend... I too... All will end in death, all! Death is awful...” and he burst into
tears.
Anna Mikháylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow, quiet
steps.
“Pierre!” she said.
Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his forehead,
wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:
“He is no more....”
Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
“Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as tears.”
She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one could see
his face. Anna Mikháylovna left him, and when she returned he was fast asleep
with his head on his arm.
In the morning Anna Mikháylovna said to Pierre:
“Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you. But God will
support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in command of an immense
fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I know you well enough to be sure
that this will not turn your head, but it imposes duties on you, and you must be a
man.”
Pierre was silent.
“Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not been there, God
only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle promised me only the
day before yesterday not to forget Borís. But he had no time. I hope, my dear
friend, you will carry out your father’s wish?”
Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in silence at
Princess Anna Mikháylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna Mikháylovna
returned to the Rostóvs’ and went to bed. On waking in the morning she told the
Rostóvs and all her acquaintances the details of Count Bezúkhov’s death. She
said the count had died as she would herself wish to die, that his end was not
only touching but edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it was
so touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not know which
had behaved better during those awful moments—the father who so remembered
everything and everybody at last and had spoken such pathetic words to the son,
or Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though
he tried hard to hide it in order not to sadden his dying father. “It is painful, but it
does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count and his worthy
son,” said she. Of the behavior of the eldest princess and Prince Vasíli she spoke
disapprovingly, but in whispers and as a great secret.
CHAPTER XXV
At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andréevich Bolkónski’s estate, the arrival of
young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but this expectation did
not upset the regular routine of life in the old prince’s household. General in
Chief Prince Nicholas Andréevich (nicknamed in society, “the King of Prussia”)
ever since the Emperor Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there
continuously with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion,
Mademoiselle Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that anyone who
wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow to Bald Hills,
while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to say that there are only
two sources of human vice—idleness and superstition, and only two virtues—
activity and intelligence. He himself undertook his daughter’s education, and to
develop these two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and
geometry till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was
occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving
problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working in the
garden, or superintending the building that was always going on at his estate. As
regularity is a prime condition facilitating activity, regularity in his household
was carried to the highest point of exactitude. He always came to table under
precisely the same conditions, and not only at the same hour but at the same
minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was
sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he
inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted men would have aroused.
Although he was in retirement and had now no influence in political affairs,
every high official appointed to the province in which the prince’s estate lay
considered it his duty to visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber just as the
architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared punctually to
the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber experienced the same
feeling of respect and even fear when the enormously high study door opened
and showed the figure of a rather small old man, with powdered wig, small
withered hands, and bushy gray eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes
hid the gleam of his shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.
On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive, Princess
Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed for the morning
greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and repeating a silent prayer. Every
morning she came in like that, and every morning prayed that the daily interview
might pass off well.
An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose quietly
and said in a whisper: “Please walk in.”
Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess timidly
opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused at the entrance.
The prince was working at the lathe and after glancing round continued his
work.
The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The large
table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted bookcases with keys in
the locks, the high desk for writing while standing up, on which lay an open
exercise book, and the lathe with tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered
around—all indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the
small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure of
the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince still possessed the tenacious
endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a few more turns of the lathe he
removed his foot from the pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather
pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter.
He never gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as
yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively, said severely:
“Quite well? All right then, sit down.” He took the exercise book containing
lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a chair with his foot.
“For tomorrow!” said he, quickly finding the page and making a scratch from
one paragraph to another with his hard nail.
The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.
“Wait a bit, here’s a letter for you,” said the old man suddenly, taking a letter
addressed in a woman’s hand from a bag hanging above the table, onto which he
threw it.
At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the princess’ face.
She took it quickly and bent her head over it.
“From Héloïse?” asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his still
sound, yellowish teeth.
“Yes, it’s from Julie,” replied the princess with a timid glance and a timid
smile.
“I’ll let two more letters pass, but the third I’ll read,” said the prince sternly;
“I’m afraid you write much nonsense. I’ll read the third!”
“Read this if you like, Father,” said the princess, blushing still more and
holding out the letter.
“The third, I said the third!” cried the prince abruptly, pushing the letter away,
and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward him the exercise book
containing geometrical figures.
“Well, madam,” he began, stooping over the book close to his daughter and
placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat, so that she felt herself
surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of old age and tobacco, which she had
known so long. “Now, madam, these triangles are equal; please note that the
angle ABC...”
The princess looked in a scared way at her father’s eyes glittering close to her;
the red patches on her face came and went, and it was plain that she understood
nothing and was so frightened that her fear would prevent her understanding any
of her father’s further explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was
the teacher’s fault or the pupil’s, this same thing happened every day: the
princess’ eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear anything, but was
only conscious of her stern father’s withered face close to her, of his breath and
the smell of him, and could think only of how to get away quickly to her own
room to make out the problem in peace. The old man was beside himself: moved
the chair on which he was sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to
control himself and not become vehement, but almost always did become
vehement, scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise book away.
The princess gave a wrong answer.
“Well now, isn’t she a fool!” shouted the prince, pushing the book aside and
turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up and down, lightly
touched his daughter’s hair and sat down again.
He drew up his chair, and continued to explain.
“This won’t do, Princess; it won’t do,” said he, when Princess Mary, having
taken and closed the exercise book with the next day’s lesson, was about to
leave: “Mathematics are most important, madam! I don’t want to have you like
our silly ladies. Get used to it and you’ll like it,” and he patted her cheek. “It will
drive all the nonsense out of your head.”
She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an uncut book
from the high desk.
“Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Héloïse has sent you.
Religious! I don’t interfere with anyone’s belief... I have looked at it. Take it.
Well, now go. Go.”
He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.
Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared expression that
rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly face yet plainer. She sat down at
her writing table, on which stood miniature portraits and which was littered with
books and papers. The princess was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put
down the geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from her
most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karágina who had been at
the Rostóvs’ name-day party.
Julie wrote in French:
Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is separation!
Though I tell myself that half my life and half my happiness are wrapped up in
you, and that in spite of the distance separating us our hearts are united by
indissoluble bonds, my heart rebels against fate and in spite of the pleasures and
distractions around me I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been
in my heart ever since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last
summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa? Why cannot I
now, as three months ago, draw fresh moral strength from your look, so gentle,
calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so well and seem to see before me as I
write?
Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the mirror which
stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and thin face. Her eyes,
always sad, now looked with particular hopelessness at her reflection in the
glass. “She flatters me,” thought the princess, turning away and continuing to
read. But Julie did not flatter her friend, the princess’ eyes—large, deep and
luminous (it seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts of warm light)
—were so beautiful that very often in spite of the plainness of her face they gave
her an attraction more powerful than that of beauty. But the princess never saw
the beautiful expression of her own eyes—the look they had when she was not
thinking of herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced unnatural
expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She went on reading:
All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is already
abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on their march to the
frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg and it is thought intends to expose
his precious person to the chances of war. God grant that the Corsican monster
who is destroying the peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it
has pleased the Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say
nothing of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one of the associations
nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas Rostóv, who with his enthusiasm could
not bear to remain inactive and has left the university to join the army. I will
confess to you, dear Mary, that in spite of his extreme youth his departure for the
army was a great grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you last
summer, is so noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which one seldom
finds nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly, he is so frank
and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my relations with him,
transient as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to my poor heart,
which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell you about our parting
and all that was said then. That is still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy
not to know these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are
generally the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too young ever
to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic and pure
intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this! The chief news, about
which all Moscow gossips, is the death of old Count Bezúkhov, and his
inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses have received very little, Prince Vasíli
nothing, and it is Monsieur Pierre who has inherited all the property and has
besides been recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezúkhov and
possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince Vasíli played a
very despicable part in this affair and that he returned to Petersburg quite
crestfallen.
I confess I understand very little about all these matters of wills and
inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom we all used to know
as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count Bezúkhov and the owner of one of
the largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to watch the change in the tone
and manners of the mammas burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the
young ladies themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always
seemed to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two years people have
amused themselves by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don’t even
know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as the future
Countess Bezúkhova. But you will understand that I have no desire for the post.
À propos of marriages: do you know that a while ago that universal auntie Anna
Mikháylovna told me, under the seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for
you. It is neither more nor less than with Prince Vasíli’s son Anatole, whom they
wish to reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguée, and it is on you
that his relations’ choice has fallen. I don’t know what you will think of it, but I
consider it my duty to let you know of it. He is said to be very handsome and a
terrible scapegrace. That is all I have been able to find out about him.
But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper, and
Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apráksins’. Read the mystical
book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here. Though there are things
in it difficult for the feeble human mind to grasp, it is an admirable book which
calms and elevates the soul. Adieu! Give my respects to monsieur your father
and my compliments to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.
JULIE
P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.
The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her luminous eyes
lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then she suddenly rose and with
her heavy tread went up to the table. She took a sheet of paper and her hand
moved rapidly over it. This is the reply she wrote, also in French:
Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great delight.
So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which you say so much
that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual effect on you. You complain of
our separation. What then should I say, if I dared complain, I who am deprived
of all who are dear to me? Ah, if we had not religion to console us life would be
very sad. Why do you suppose that I should look severely on your affection for
that young man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I understand
such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve of them,
neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian love, love of
one’s neighbor, love of one’s enemy, is worthier, sweeter, and better than the
feelings which the beautiful eyes of a young man can inspire in a romantic and
loving young girl like yourself.
The news of Count Bezúkhov’s death reached us before your letter and my
father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last representative but
one of the great century, and that it is his own turn now, but that he will do all he
can to let his turn come as late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible
misfortune!
I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He always
seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the quality I value most in
people. As to his inheritance and the part played by Prince Vasíli, it is very sad
for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine Saviour’s words, that it is easier for a
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom
of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasíli but am still more sorry for Pierre. So
young, and burdened with such riches—to what temptations he will be exposed!
If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the
poorest beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume you have sent me
and which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that among some
good things it contains others which our weak human understanding cannot
grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading what is
unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never could understand the
fondness some people have for confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical
books that merely awaken their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them
a bent for exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read
the Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they
contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and
holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh which forms an
impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather confine ourselves to
studying those sublime rules which our divine Saviour has left for our guidance
here below. Let us try to conform to them and follow them, and let us be
persuaded that the less we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall
please God, who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the
less we seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner
will He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.
My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me that he has
received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasíli. In regard to this
project of marriage for me, I will tell you, dear sweet friend, that I look on
marriage as a divine institution to which we must conform. However painful it
may be to me, should the Almighty lay the duties of wife and mother upon me I
shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by
examining my feelings toward him whom He may give me for husband.
I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy arrival at Bald
Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief one, however, for he will
leave us again to take part in this unhappy war into which we have been drawn,
God knows how or why. Not only where you are—at the heart of affairs and of
the world—is the talk all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of
nature—which townsfolk consider characteristic of the country—rumors of war
are heard and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day before
yesterday during my daily walk through the village I witnessed a heartrending
scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled from our people and starting to
join the army. You should have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children
of the men who were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though
mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and
forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in
killing one another.
Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most Holy
Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!
MARY
“Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already dispatched mine. I
have written to my poor mother,” said the smiling Mademoiselle Bourienne
rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r’s. She brought into
Princess Mary’s strenuous, mournful, and gloomy world a quite different
atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and self-satisfied.
“Princess, I must warn you,” she added, lowering her voice and evidently
listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with exaggerated grasseyement,
“the prince has been scolding Michael Ivánovich. He is in a very bad humor,
very morose. Be prepared.”
“Ah, dear friend,” replied Princess Mary, “I have asked you never to warn me
of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge him and would not
have others do so.”
The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five minutes late in
starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting room with a look of
alarm. Between twelve and two o’clock, as the day was mapped out, the prince
rested and the princess played the clavichord.
CHAPTER XXVI
The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of the
prince, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house through the
closed doors came the sound of difficult passages—twenty times repeated—of a
sonata by Dussek.
Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to the porch.
Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to alight, and let her
pass into the house before him. Old Tíkhon, wearing a wig, put his head out of
the door of the antechamber, reported in a whisper that the prince was sleeping,
and hastily closed the door. Tíkhon knew that neither the son’s arrival nor any
other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day.
Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well as Tíkhon; he looked at his watch as
if to ascertain whether his father’s habits had changed since he was at home last,
and, having assured himself that they had not, he turned to his wife.
“He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary’s room,” he said.
The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes and her
short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak just as merrily and
prettily as ever.
“Why, this is a palace!” she said to her husband, looking around with the
expression with which people compliment their host at a ball. “Let’s come,
quick, quick!” And with a glance round, she smiled at Tíkhon, at her husband,
and at the footman who accompanied them.
“Is that Mary practicing? Let’s go quietly and take her by surprise.”
Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.
“You’ve grown older, Tíkhon,” he said in passing to the old man, who kissed
his hand.
Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord came,
the pretty, fair-haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne, rushed out
apparently beside herself with delight.
“Ah! what joy for the princess!” exclaimed she: “At last! I must let her know.”
“No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne,” said the little
princess, kissing her. “I know you already through my sister-in-law’s friendship
for you. She was not expecting us?”
They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound of
the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped and made a
grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.
The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the middle, a
cry was heard, then Princess Mary’s heavy tread and the sound of kissing. When
Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who had only met once before for a
short time at his wedding, were in each other’s arms warmly pressing their lips
to whatever place they happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near
them pressing her hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally
ready to cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as
lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two women let go of one
another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other’s hands, kissing
them and pulling them away, and again began kissing each other on the face, and
then to Prince Andrew’s surprise both began to cry and kissed again.
Mademoiselle Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at
ease, but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and
apparently it never entered their heads that it could have been otherwise at this
meeting.
“Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!...” they suddenly exclaimed, and then laughed. “I
dreamed last night...”—“You were not expecting us?...” “Ah! Mary, you have
got thinner?...” “And you have grown stouter!...”
“I knew the princess at once,” put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
“And I had no idea!...” exclaimed Princess Mary. “Ah, Andrew, I did not see
you.”
Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, and he told her
she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess Mary had turned toward her
brother, and through her tears the loving, warm, gentle look of her large
luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment, rested on Prince Andrew’s face.
The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip continually
and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary and drawing up again
next moment when her face broke into a smile of glittering teeth and sparkling
eyes. She told of an accident they had had on the Spásski Hill which might have
been serious for her in her condition, and immediately after that informed them
that she had left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she
would have to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that Kitty
Odýntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor for Mary, a real
one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess Mary was still looking
silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were full of love and sadness. It was
plain that she was following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law’s
words. In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she addressed her
brother:
“So you are really going to the war, Andrew?” she said sighing.
Lise sighed too.
“Yes, and even tomorrow,” replied her brother.
“He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
promotion...”
Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of thought
turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her figure.
“Is it certain?” she said.
The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said: “Yes, quite
certain. Ah! it is very dreadful...”
Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law’s and
unexpectedly again began to cry.
“She needs rest,” said Prince Andrew with a frown. “Don’t you, Lise? Take
her to your room and I’ll go to Father. How is he? Just the same?”
“Yes, just the same. Though I don’t know what your opinion will be,”
answered the princess joyfully.
“And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the lathe?”
asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which showed that, in
spite of all his love and respect for his father, he was aware of his weaknesses.
“The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and my
geometry lessons,” said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her lessons in geometry
were among the greatest delights of her life.
When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the old
prince to get up, Tíkhon came to call the young prince to his father. The old man
made a departure from his usual routine in honor of his son’s arrival: he gave
orders to admit him to his apartments while he dressed for dinner. The old prince
always dressed in old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered
hair; and when Prince Andrew entered his father’s dressing room (not with the
contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the
animated face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large
leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to
Tíkhon.
“Ah! here’s the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?” said the old man,
shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tíkhon was holding fast to
plait, would allow.
“You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like this he’ll
soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?” And he held out his cheek.
The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He used to say
that a nap “after dinner was silver—before dinner, golden.”) He cast happy,
sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince
Andrew went up and kissed his father on the spot indicated to him. He made no
reply on his father’s favorite topic—making fun of the military men of the day,
and more particularly of Bonaparte.
“Yes, Father, I have come to you and brought my wife who is pregnant,” said
Prince Andrew, following every movement of his father’s face with an eager and
respectful look. “How is your health?”
“Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from morning
till night and abstemious, so of course I am well.”
“Thank God,” said his son smiling.
“God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on,” he continued, returning to his
hobby; “tell me how the Germans have taught you to fight Bonaparte by this
new science you call ‘strategy.’”
Prince Andrew smiled.
“Give me time to collect my wits, Father,” said he, with a smile that showed
that his father’s foibles did not prevent his son from loving and honoring him.
“Why, I have not yet had time to settle down!”
“Nonsense, nonsense!” cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to see whether it
was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand. “The house for your wife is
ready. Princess Mary will take her there and show her over, and they’ll talk
nineteen to the dozen. That’s their woman’s way! I am glad to have her. Sit down
and talk. About Mikhelson’s army I understand—Tolstóy ‘s too... a simultaneous
expedition.... But what’s the southern army to do? Prussia is neutral... I know
that. What about Austria?” said he, rising from his chair and pacing up and down
the room followed by Tíkhon, who ran after him, handing him different articles
of clothing. “What of Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?”
Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began—at first reluctantly, but
gradually with more and more animation, and from habit changing
unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on—to explain the plan of
operation for the coming campaign. He explained how an army, ninety thousand
strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring her out of her neutrality and draw
her into the war; how part of that army was to join some Swedish forces at
Stralsund; how two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred
thousand Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty thousand
Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and how a total force of
five hundred thousand men was to attack the French from different sides. The
old prince did not evince the least interest during this explanation, but as if he
were not listening to it continued to dress while walking about, and three times
unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: “The white one, the
white one!”
This meant that Tíkhon was not handing him the waistcoat he wanted.
Another time he interrupted, saying:
“And will she soon be confined?” and shaking his head reproachfully said:
“That’s bad! Go on, go on.”
The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old age:
“Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra.” *
* “Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he’ll
return.”
He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his son was
accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised the lid, drew out a
drawer, and took out an exercise book filled with his bold, tall, close
handwriting.
“I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs; hand
them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond and a letter; it
is a premium for the man who writes a history of Suvórov’s wars. Send it to the
Academy. Here are some jottings for you to read when I am gone. You will find
them useful.”
Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long time yet. He
felt that he must not say it.
“I will do it all, Father,” he said.
“Well, now, good-by!” He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced him.
“Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt me, your old
father...” he paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous voice suddenly
shrieked: “but if I hear that you have not behaved like a son of Nicholas
Bolkónski, I shall be ashamed!”
“You need not have said that to me, Father,” said the son with a smile.
The old man was silent.
“I also wanted to ask you,” continued Prince Andrew, “if I’m killed and if I
have a son, do not let him be taken away from you—as I said yesterday... let him
grow up with you.... Please.”
“Not let the wife have him?” said the old man, and laughed.
They stood silent, facing one another. The old man’s sharp eyes were fixed
straight on his son’s. Something twitched in the lower part of the old prince’s
face.
“We’ve said good-by. Go!” he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry voice,
opening his door.
“What is it? What?” asked both princesses when they saw for a moment at the
door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white dressing gown,
spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.
Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.
“Well!” he said, turning to his wife.
And this “Well!” sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying: “Now go
through your performance.”
“Andrew, already!” said the little princess, turning pale and looking with
dismay at her husband.
He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.
He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her face, and
carefully placed her in an easy chair.
“Adieu, Mary,” said he gently to his sister, taking her by the hand and kissing
her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.
The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne chafing her
temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law, still looked with her
beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through which Prince Andrew had gone
and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From the study, like pistol shots,
came the frequent sound of the old man angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had
Prince Andrew gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern figure of
the old man in the white dressing gown looked out.
“Gone? That’s all right!” said he; and looking angrily at the unconscious little
princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed the door.
BOOK TWO: 1805
CHAPTER I
In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and towns of the
Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly arriving from Russia were
settling near the fortress of Braunau and burdening the inhabitants on whom they
were quartered. Braunau was the headquarters of the commander in chief,
Kutúzov.
On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just reached
Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be inspected by the
commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance of the locality and
surroundings—fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled roofs, and hills in the distance—
and despite the fact that the inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers)
were not Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment
preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.
On the evening of the last day’s march an order had been received that the
commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march. Though the words
of the order were not clear to the regimental commander, and the question arose
whether the troops were to be in marching order or not, it was decided at a
consultation between the battalion commanders to present the regiment in parade
order, on the principle that it is always better to “bow too low than not bow low
enough.” So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending and
cleaning all night long without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and
company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by morning the regiment—
instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it had been on its last march the day
before—presented a well-ordered array of two thousand men each of whom
knew his place and his duty, had every button and every strap in place, and
shone with cleanliness. And not only externally was all in order, but had it
pleased the commander in chief to look under the uniforms he would have found
on every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of
articles, “awl, soap, and all,” as the soldiers say. There was only one
circumstance concerning which no one could be at ease. It was the state of the
soldiers’ boots. More than half the men’s boots were in holes. But this defect was
not due to any fault of the regimental commander, for in spite of repeated
demands boots had not been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the
regiment had marched some seven hundred miles.
The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and thick-set
general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider from chest to back than
across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform showing the creases where
it had been folded and thick gold epaulettes which seemed to stand rather than
lie down on his massive shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing
one of the most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in front of the line
and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain that
the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind was
engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides military matters,
social interests and the fair sex occupied no small part of his thoughts.
“Well, Michael Mítrich, sir?” he said, addressing one of the battalion
commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain that they both felt
happy). “We had our hands full last night. However, I think the regiment is not a
bad one, eh?”
The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.
“It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsarítsin Meadow.”
“What?” asked the commander.
At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had been
posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an aide-de-camp followed
by a Cossack.
The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been clearly
worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief wished to see the
regiment just in the state in which it had been on the march: in their greatcoats,
and packs, and without any preparation whatever.
A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutúzov the day
before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army of the
Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutúzov, not considering this junction
advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of his view, to show the
Austrian general the wretched state in which the troops arrived from Russia.
With this object he intended to meet the regiment; so the worse the condition it
was in, the better pleased the commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-
camp did not know these circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite
order that the men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and that
the commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On hearing this the
regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged his shoulders, and
spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.
“A fine mess we’ve made of it!” he remarked.
“There now! Didn’t I tell you, Michael Mítrich, that if it was said ‘on the
march’ it meant in greatcoats?” said he reproachfully to the battalion
commander. “Oh, my God!” he added, stepping resolutely forward. “Company
commanders!” he shouted in a voice accustomed to command. “Sergeants
major!... How soon will he be here?” he asked the aide-de-camp with a
respectful politeness evidently relating to the personage he was referring to.
“In an hour’s time, I should say.”
“Shall we have time to change clothes?”
“I don’t know, General....”
The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered the soldiers
to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders ran off to their
companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the greatcoats were not in very
good condition), and instantly the squares that had up to then been in regular
order and silent began to sway and stretch and hum with voices. On all sides
soldiers were running to and fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of their
shoulders and pulling the straps over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and
drawing the sleeves on with upraised arms.
In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had become gray
instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his jerky steps to the
front of the regiment and examined it from a distance.
“Whatever is this? This!” he shouted and stood still. “Commander of the third
company!”
“Commander of the third company wanted by the general!... commander to
the general... third company to the commander.” The words passed along the
lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing officer.
When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination in a cry
of: “The general to the third company,” the missing officer appeared from behind
his company and, though he was a middle-aged man and not in the habit of
running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on his toes toward the general. The
captain’s face showed the uneasiness of a schoolboy who is told to repeat a
lesson he has not learned. Spots appeared on his nose, the redness of which was
evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The general
looked the captain up and down as he came up panting, slackening his pace as he
approached.
“You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?” shouted the
regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and pointing at a soldier in the
ranks of the third company in a greatcoat of bluish cloth, which contrasted with
the others. “What have you been after? The commander in chief is expected and
you leave your place? Eh? I’ll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a
parade.... Eh...?”
The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior, pressed
two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this pressure lay his only
hope of salvation.
“Well, why don’t you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as a
Hungarian?” said the commander with an austere gibe.
“Your excellency...”
“Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
excellency?... nobody knows.”
“Your excellency, it’s the officer Dólokhov, who has been reduced to the
ranks,” said the captain softly.
“Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier? If a
soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the others.”
“Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march.”
“Gave him leave? Leave? That’s just like you young men,” said the
regimental commander cooling down a little. “Leave indeed.... One says a word
to you and you... What?” he added with renewed irritation, “I beg you to dress
your men decently.”
And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his jerky steps
down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display of anger and walking
up to the regiment wished to find a further excuse for wrath. Having snapped at
an officer for an unpolished badge, at another because his line was not straight,
he reached the third company.
“H-o-o-w are you standing? Where’s your leg? Your leg?” shouted the
commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there were still five men
between him and Dólokhov with his bluish-gray uniform.
Dólokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with his clear,
insolent eyes in the general’s face.
“Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his coat... the ras...”
he did not finish.
“General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure...” Dólokhov
hurriedly interrupted.
“No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!”
“Not bound to endure insults,” Dólokhov concluded in loud, ringing tones.
The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became silent,
angrily pulling down his tight scarf.
“I request you to have the goodness to change your coat,” he said as he turned
away.
CHAPTER II
“He’s coming!” shouted the signaler at that moment.
The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the stirrup with
trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle, righted himself, drew his
saber, and with a happy and resolute countenance, opening his mouth awry,
prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered like a bird preening its plumage and
became motionless.
“Att-ention!” shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking voice
which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment, and welcome for the
approaching chief.
Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a high, light
blue Viennese calèche, slightly creaking on its springs and drawn by six horses
at a smart trot. Behind the calèche galloped the suite and a convoy of Croats.
Beside Kutúzov sat an Austrian general, in a white uniform that looked strange
among the Russian black ones. The calèche stopped in front of the regiment.
Kutúzov and the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Kutúzov
smiled slightly as treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as if
those two thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the regimental
commander did not exist.
The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as with a
jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence the feeble voice of
the commander in chief was heard. The regiment roared, “Health to your ex...
len... len... lency!” and again all became silent. At first Kutúzov stood still while
the regiment moved; then he and the general in white, accompanied by the suite,
walked between the ranks.
From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief and
devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and from the way
he walked through the ranks behind the generals, bending forward and hardly
able to restrain his jerky movements, and from the way he darted forward at
every word or gesture of the commander in chief, it was evident that he
performed his duty as a subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as a
commander. Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its commander the
regiment, in comparison with others that had reached Braunau at the same time,
was in splendid condition. There were only 217 sick and stragglers. Everything
was in good order except the boots.
Kutúzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few friendly
words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, sometimes also to the
soldiers. Looking at their boots he several times shook his head sadly, pointing
them out to the Austrian general with an expression which seemed to say that he
was not blaming anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of things it
was. The regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to
miss a single word of the commander in chief’s regarding the regiment. Behind
Kutúzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken word to be heard,
followed some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen talked among
themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the commander in chief
walked a handsome adjutant. This was Prince Bolkónski. Beside him was his
comrade Nesvítski, a tall staff officer, extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling,
handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvítski could hardly keep from laughter
provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who walked beside him. This hussar, with
a grave face and without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes,
watched the regimental commander’s back and mimicked his every movement.
Each time the commander started and bent forward, the hussar started and bent
forward in exactly the same manner. Nesvítski laughed and nudged the others to
make them look at the wag.
Kutúzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which were
starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the third company
he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected this, involuntarily came
closer to him.
“Ah, Timókhin!” said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had been
reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.
One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself more than
Timókhin had done when he was reprimanded by the regimental commander, but
now that the commander in chief addressed him he drew himself up to such an
extent that it seemed he could not have sustained it had the commander in chief
continued to look at him, and so Kutúzov, who evidently understood his case and
wished him nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile
flitting over his scarred and puffy face.
“Another Ismail comrade,” said he. “A brave officer! Are you satisfied with
him?” he asked the regimental commander.
And the latter—unconscious that he was being reflected in the hussar officer
as in a looking glass—started, moved forward, and answered: “Highly satisfied,
your excellency!”
“We all have our weaknesses,” said Kutúzov smiling and walking away from
him. “He used to have a predilection for Bacchus.”
The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this and did not
answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of the red-nosed captain and
his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose with such
exactitude that Nesvítski could not help laughing. Kutúzov turned round. The
officer evidently had complete control of his face, and while Kutúzov was
turning managed to make a grimace and then assume a most serious, deferential,
and innocent expression.
The third company was the last, and Kutúzov pondered, apparently trying to
recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from among the suite and
said in French:
“You told me to remind you of the officer Dólokhov, reduced to the ranks in
this regiment.”
“Where is Dólokhov?” asked Kutúzov.
Dólokhov, who had already changed into a soldier’s gray greatcoat, did not
wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired soldier, with his clear blue
eyes, stepped forward from the ranks, went up to the commander in chief, and
presented arms.
“Have you a complaint to make?” Kutúzov asked with a slight frown.
“This is Dólokhov,” said Prince Andrew.
“Ah!” said Kutúzov. “I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your duty. The
Emperor is gracious, and I shan’t forget you if you deserve well.”
The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as boldly as they
had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by their expression to tear
open the veil of convention that separates a commander in chief so widely from
a private.
“One thing I ask of your excellency,” Dólokhov said in his firm, ringing,
deliberate voice. “I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault and prove my
devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!”
Kutúzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had turned
from Captain Timókhin again flitted over his face. He turned away with a
grimace as if to say that everything Dólokhov had said to him and everything he
could say had long been known to him, that he was weary of it and it was not at
all what he wanted. He turned away and went to the carriage.
The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their appointed quarters
near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and clothes and to rest after
their hard marches.
“You won’t bear me a grudge, Prokhór Ignátych?” said the regimental
commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its quarters and riding
up to Captain Timókhin who was walking in front. (The regimental
commander’s face now that the inspection was happily over beamed with
irrepressible delight.) “It’s in the Emperor’s service... it can’t be helped... one is
sometimes a bit hasty on parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!...
He was very pleased!” And he held out his hand to the captain.
“Don’t mention it, General, as if I’d be so bold!” replied the captain, his nose
growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where two front teeth were
missing that had been knocked out by the butt end of a gun at Ismail.
“And tell Mr. Dólokhov that I won’t forget him—he may be quite easy. And
tell me, please—I’ve been meaning to ask—how is he behaving himself, and in
general...”
“As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your excellency; but his
character...” said Timókhin.
“And what about his character?” asked the regimental commander.
“It’s different on different days,” answered the captain. “One day he is
sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he’s a wild beast.... In
Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew.”
“Oh, well, well!” remarked the regimental commander. “Still, one must have
pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important connections...
Well, then, you just...”
“I will, your excellency,” said Timókhin, showing by his smile that he
understood his commander’s wish.
“Well, of course, of course!”
The regimental commander sought out Dólokhov in the ranks and, reining in
his horse, said to him:
“After the next affair... epaulettes.”
Dólokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the mocking smile
on his lips change.
“Well, that’s all right,” continued the regimental commander. “A cup of vodka
for the men from me,” he added so that the soldiers could hear. “I thank you all!
God be praised!” and he rode past that company and overtook the next one.
“Well, he’s really a good fellow, one can serve under him,” said Timókhin to
the subaltern beside him.
“In a word, a hearty one...” said the subaltern, laughing (the regimental
commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).
The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected the soldiers.
The company marched on gaily. The soldiers’ voices could be heard on every
side.
“And they said Kutúzov was blind of one eye?”
“And so he is! Quite blind!”
“No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands... he noticed
everything...”
“When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I...”
“And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were smeared with
chalk—as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as they do the guns.”
“I say, Fédeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You were near
him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau.”
“Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn’t know! The
Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are putting them down.
When they’ve been put down, the war with Buonaparte will begin. And he says
Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you’re a fool. You’d better listen more
carefully!”
“What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is turning into
the village already... they will have their buckwheat cooked before we reach our
quarters.”
“Give me a biscuit, you devil!”
“And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That’s just it, friend! Ah, well,
never mind, here you are.”
“They might call a halt here or we’ll have to do another four miles without
eating.”
“Wasn’t it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still and are
drawn along.”
“And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all seemed to be
Poles—all under the Russian crown—but here they’re all regular Germans.”
“Singers to the front” came the captain’s order.
And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A drummer,
their leader, turned round facing the singers, and flourishing his arm, began a
long-drawn-out soldiers’ song, commencing with the words: “Morning dawned,
the sun was rising,” and concluding: “On then, brothers, on to glory, led by
Father Kámenski.” This song had been composed in the Turkish campaign and
now being sung in Austria, the only change being that the words “Father
Kámenski” were replaced by “Father Kutúzov.”
Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms as if
flinging something to the ground, the drummer—a lean, handsome soldier of
forty—looked sternly at the singers and screwed up his eyes. Then having
satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on him, he raised both arms as if
carefully lifting some invisible but precious object above his head and, holding it
there for some seconds, suddenly flung it down and began:
“Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!”
“Oh, my bower new...!” chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet player, in
spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the front and, walking
backwards before the company, jerked his shoulders and flourished his castanets
as if threatening someone. The soldiers, swinging their arms and keeping time
spontaneously, marched with long steps. Behind the company the sound of
wheels, the creaking of springs, and the tramp of horses’ hoofs were heard.
Kutúzov and his suite were returning to the town. The commander in chief made
a sign that the men should continue to march at ease, and he and all his suite
showed pleasure at the sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing soldier
and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file from the right flank,
beside which the carriage passed the company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily
attracted notice. It was Dólokhov marching with particular grace and boldness in
time to the song and looking at those driving past as if he pitied all who were not
at that moment marching with the company. The hussar cornet of Kutúzov’s
suite who had mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from the carriage
and rode up to Dólokhov.
Hussar cornet Zherkóv had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to the wild set
led by Dólokhov. Zherkóv had met Dólokhov abroad as a private and had not
seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutúzov had spoken to the gentleman
ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of an old friend.
“My dear fellow, how are you?” said he through the singing, making his horse
keep pace with the company.
“How am I?” Dólokhov answered coldly. “I am as you see.”
The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy gaiety with
which Zherkóv spoke, and to the intentional coldness of Dólokhov’s reply.
“And how do you get on with the officers?” inquired Zherkóv.
“All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto the
staff?”
“I was attached; I’m on duty.”
Both were silent.
“She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve,” went the song,
arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness. Their
conversation would probably have been different but for the effect of that song.
“Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?” asked Dólokhov.
“The devil only knows! They say so.”
“I’m glad,” answered Dólokhov briefly and clearly, as the song demanded.
“I say, come round some evening and we’ll have a game of faro!” said
Zherkóv.
“Why, have you too much money?”
“Do come.”
“I can’t. I’ve sworn not to. I won’t drink and won’t play till I get reinstated.”
“Well, that’s only till the first engagement.”
“We shall see.”
They were again silent.
“Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the staff...”
Dólokhov smiled. “Don’t trouble. If I want anything, I won’t beg—I’ll take
it!”
“Well, never mind; I only...”
“And I only...”
“Good-by.”
“Good health...”
“It’s a long, long way.
To my native land...”
Zherkóv touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly from foot to
foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down, galloped past the company,
and overtook the carriage, still keeping time to the song.
CHAPTER III
On returning from the review, Kutúzov took the Austrian general into his
private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers relating to the
condition of the troops on their arrival, and the letters that had come from the
Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command of the advanced army. Prince
Andrew Bolkónski came into the room with the required papers. Kutúzov and
the Austrian member of the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a
plan was spread out.
“Ah!...” said Kutúzov glancing at Bolkónski as if by this exclamation he was
asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with the conversation in French.
“All I can say, General,” said he with a pleasant elegance of expression and
intonation that obliged one to listen to each deliberately spoken word. It was
evident that Kutúzov himself listened with pleasure to his own voice. “All I can
say, General, is that if the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of
His Majesty the Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should
long ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me
personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command of the
army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful general—of whom
Austria has so many—and to lay down all this heavy responsibility. But
circumstances are sometimes too strong for us, General.”
And Kutúzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, “You are quite at liberty not
to believe me and I don’t even care whether you do or not, but you have no
grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole point.”
The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to reply in the
same tone.
“On the contrary,” he said, in a querulous and angry tone that contrasted with
his flattering words, “on the contrary, your excellency’s participation in the
common action is highly valued by His Majesty; but we think the present delay
is depriving the splendid Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they
have been accustomed to win in their battles,” he concluded his evidently
prearranged sentence.
Kutúzov bowed with the same smile.
“But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with which His
Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine that the Austrian
troops, under the direction of so skillful a leader as General Mack, have by now
already gained a decisive victory and no longer need our aid,” said Kutúzov.
The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an Austrian
defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the unfavorable rumors that
were afloat, and so Kutúzov’s suggestion of an Austrian victory sounded much
like irony. But Kutúzov went on blandly smiling with the same expression,
which seemed to say that he had a right to suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter
he had received from Mack’s army informed him of a victory and stated
strategically the position of the army was very favorable.
“Give me that letter,” said Kutúzov turning to Prince Andrew. “Please have a
look at it”—and Kutúzov with an ironical smile about the corners of his mouth
read to the Austrian general the following passage, in German, from the
Archduke Ferdinand’s letter:
We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men with which
to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech. Also, as we are masters
of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage of commanding both sides of
the Danube, so that should the enemy not cross the Lech, we can cross the
Danube, throw ourselves on his line of communications, recross the river lower
down, and frustrate his intention should he try to direct his whole force against
our faithful ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the
Imperial Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in conjunction with
it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the fate he deserves.
Kutúzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at the member
of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.
“But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect the
worst,” said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have done with jests and
to come to business. He involuntarily looked round at the aide-de-camp.
“Excuse me, General,” interrupted Kutúzov, also turning to Prince Andrew.
“Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlóvski all the reports from our scouts.
Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is one from His Highness the
Archduke Ferdinand and here are these,” he said, handing him several papers,
“make a neat memorandum in French out of all this, showing all the news we
have had of the movements of the Austrian army, and then give it to his
excellency.”
Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from the first
not only what had been said but also what Kutúzov would have liked to tell him.
He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both, stepped softly over the carpet
and went out into the waiting room.
Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia, he
had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his face, in his
movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his former affected languor
and indolence. He now looked like a man who has time to think of the
impression he makes on others, but is occupied with agreeable and interesting
work. His face expressed more satisfaction with himself and those around him,
his smile and glance were brighter and more attractive.
Kutúzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very kindly,
promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the other adjutants, and had
taken him to Vienna and given him the more serious commissions. From Vienna
Kutúzov wrote to his old comrade, Prince Andrew’s father.
Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his industry,
firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to have such a subordinate
by me.
On Kutúzov’s staff, among his fellow officers and in the army generally,
Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two quite opposite
reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be different from
themselves and from everyone else, expected great things of him, listened to
him, admired, and imitated him, and with them Prince Andrew was natural and
pleasant. Others, the majority, disliked him and considered him conceited, cold,
and disagreeable. But among these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his
stand so that they respected and even feared him.
Coming out of Kutúzov’s room into the waiting room with the papers in his
hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp on duty,
Kozlóvski, who was sitting at the window with a book.
“Well, Prince?” asked Kozlóvski.
“I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not advancing.”
“And why is it?”
Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
“Any news from Mack?”
“No.”
“If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come.”
“Probably,” said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.
But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the order of
Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head, who had
evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door. Prince Andrew
stopped short.
“Commander in Chief Kutúzov?” said the newly arrived general speaking
quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and advancing
straight toward the inner door.
“The commander in chief is engaged,” said Kozlóvski, going hurriedly up to
the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. “Whom shall I
announce?”
The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlóvski, who was rather
short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.
“The commander in chief is engaged,” repeated Kozlóvski calmly.
The general’s face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He took out a
notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out the leaf, gave it to
Kozlóvski, stepped quickly to the window, and threw himself into a chair, gazing
at those in the room as if asking, “Why do they look at me?” Then he lifted his
head, stretched his neck as if he intended to say something, but immediately,
with affected indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer sound
which immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened and Kutúzov
appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged head bent forward as
though running away from some danger, and, making long, quick strides with his
thin legs, went up to Kutúzov.
“Vous voyez le malheureux Mack,” he uttered in a broken voice.
Kutúzov’s face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly immobile
for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a wave and his forehead
became smooth again, he bowed his head respectfully, closed his eyes, silently
let Mack enter his room before him, and closed the door himself behind him.
The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been beaten and
that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be correct. Within half an
hour adjutants had been sent in various directions with orders which showed that
the Russian troops, who had hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to
meet the enemy.
Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief interest lay in
the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack and heard the details of his
disaster he understood that half the campaign was lost, understood all the
difficulties of the Russian army’s position, and vividly imagined what awaited it
and the part he would have to play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the
thought of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week’s time he
might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian encounter with the French
since Suvórov met them. He feared that Bonaparte’s genius might outweigh all
the courage of the Russian troops, and at the same time could not admit the idea
of his hero being disgraced.
Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward his room
to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the corridor he met
Nesvítski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag Zherkóv; they were as
usual laughing.
“Why are you so glum?” asked Nesvítski noticing Prince Andrew’s pale face
and glittering eyes.
“There’s nothing to be gay about,” answered Bolkónski.
Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvítski and Zherkóv, there came toward them
from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general who on
Kutúzov’s staff in charge of the provisioning of the Russian army, and the
member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the previous evening. There was
room enough in the wide corridor for the generals to pass the three officers quite
easily, but Zherkóv, pushing Nesvítski aside with his arm, said in a breathless
voice,
“They’re coming!... they’re coming!... Stand aside, make way, please make
way!”
The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid embarrassing
attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkóv there suddenly appeared a stupid
smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.
“Your excellency,” said he in German, stepping forward and addressing the
Austrian general, “I have the honor to congratulate you.”
He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with the other,
awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.
The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing the
seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment’s attention. He
screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.
“I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived, quite well,
only a little bruised just here,” he added, pointing with a beaming smile to his
head.
The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
“Gott, wie naiv!” * said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.
* “Good God, what simplicity!”
Nesvítski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but Bolkónski,
turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and turned to Zherkóv.
The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of Mack, the news of his
defeat, and the thought of what lay before the Russian army found vent in anger
at Zherkóv’s untimely jest.
“If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself,” he said sharply, with a
slight trembling of the lower jaw, “I can’t prevent your doing so; but I warn you
that if you dare to play the fool in my presence, I will teach you to behave
yourself.”
Nesvítski and Zherkóv were so surprised by this outburst that they gazed at
Bolkónski silently with wide-open eyes.
“What’s the matter? I only congratulated them,” said Zherkóv.
“I am not jesting with you; please be silent!” cried Bolkónski, and taking
Nesvítski’s arm he left Zherkóv, who did not know what to say.
“Come, what’s the matter, old fellow?” said Nesvítski trying to soothe him.
“What’s the matter?” exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his
excitement. “Don’t you understand that either we are officers serving our Tsar
and our country, rejoicing in the successes and grieving at the misfortunes of our
common cause, or we are merely lackeys who care nothing for their master’s
business. Quarante mille hommes massacrés et l’armée de nos alliés détruite, et
vous trouvez là le mot pour rire,” * he said, as if strengthening his views by this
French sentence. “C’est bien pour un garçon de rien comme cet individu dont
vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour vous. *(2) Only a
hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this way,” he added in Russian—but
pronouncing the word with a French accent—having noticed that Zherkóv could
still hear him.
* “Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies
destroyed, and you find that a cause for jesting!”
He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he turned
and went out of the corridor.
CHAPTER IV
The Pávlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The squadron
in which Nicholas Rostóv served as a cadet was quartered in the German village
of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were assigned to cavalry-captain
Denísov, the squadron commander, known throughout the whole cavalry
division as Váska Denísov. Cadet Rostóv, ever since he had overtaken the
regiment in Poland, had lived with the squadron commander.
On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the news of
Mack’s defeat, the camp life of the officers of this squadron was proceeding as
usual. Denísov, who had been losing at cards all night, had not yet come home
when Rostóv rode back early in the morning from a foraging expedition. Rostóv
in his cadet uniform, with a jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg
over the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a moment in the
stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang down and called to
his orderly.
“Ah, Bondarénko, dear friend!” said he to the hussar who rushed up headlong
to the horse. “Walk him up and down, my dear fellow,” he continued, with that
gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young people show to everyone
when they are happy.
“Yes, your excellency,” answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his head.
“Mind, walk him up and down well!”
Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarénko had already
thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse’s head. It was evident that
the cadet was liberal with his tips and that it paid to serve him. Rostóv patted the
horse’s neck and then his flank, and lingered for a moment.
“Splendid! What a horse he will be!” he thought with a smile, and holding up
his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the porch. His landlord, who
in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork in hand, was clearing manure from
the cowhouse, looked out, and his face immediately brightened on seeing
Rostóv. “Schön gut Morgen! Schön gut Morgen!” * he said winking with a
merry smile, evidently pleased to greet the young man.
* “A very good morning! A very good morning!”
“Schon fleissig?” * said Rostóv with the same gay brotherly smile which did
not leave his eager face. “Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen! Kaiser Alexander
hoch!” *(2) said he, quoting words often repeated by the German landlord.
* “Busy already?”
The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and waving
it above his head cried:
“Und die ganze Welt hoch!” *
* “And hurrah for the whole world!”
Rostóv waved his cap above his head like the German and cried laughing,
“Und vivat die ganze Welt!” Though neither the German cleaning his cowshed
nor Rostóv back with his platoon from foraging for hay had any reason for
rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight and brotherly love,
wagged their heads in token of their mutual affection, and parted smiling, the
German returning to his cowshed and Rostóv going to the cottage he occupied
with Denísov.
“What about your master?” he asked Lavrúshka, Denísov’s orderly, whom all
the regiment knew for a rogue.
“Hasn’t been in since the evening. Must have been losing,” answered
Lavrúshka. “I know by now, if he wins he comes back early to brag about it, but
if he stays out till morning it means he’s lost and will come back in a rage. Will
you have coffee?”
“Yes, bring some.”
Ten minutes later Lavrúshka brought the coffee. “He’s coming!” said he.
“Now for trouble!” Rostóv looked out of the window and saw Denísov coming
home. Denísov was a small man with a red face, sparkling black eyes, and black
tousled mustache and hair. He wore an unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging
down in creases, and a crumpled shako on the back of his head. He came up to
the porch gloomily, hanging his head.
“Lavwúska!” he shouted loudly and angrily, “take it off, blockhead!”
“Well, I am taking it off,” replied Lavrúshka’s voice.
“Ah, you’re up already,” said Denísov, entering the room.
“Long ago,” answered Rostóv, “I have already been for the hay, and have seen
Fräulein Mathilde.”
“Weally! And I’ve been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a damned fool!”
cried Denísov, not pronouncing his r’s. “Such ill luck! Such ill luck. As soon as
you left, it began and went on. Hullo there! Tea!”
Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong teeth, he
began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his thick tangled black hair.
“And what devil made me go to that wat?” (an officer nicknamed “the rat”) he
said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both hands. “Just fancy, he didn’t
let me win a single cahd, not one cahd.”
He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in his fist, and
tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while he continued to shout.
“He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles it; gives the
singles and snatches the doubles!”
He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it away. Then
he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked cheerfully with his
glittering, black eyes at Rostóv.
“If at least we had some women here; but there’s nothing foh one to do but
dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who’s there?” he said,
turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy boots and the clinking of spurs
that came to a stop, and a respectful cough.
“The squadron quartermaster!” said Lavrúshka.
Denísov’s face puckered still more.
“Wetched!” he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in it.
“Wostóv, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove the purse undah
the pillow,” he said, and went out to the quartermaster.
Rostóv took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new coins in
separate piles, began counting them.
“Ah! Telyánin! How d’ye do? They plucked me last night,” came Denísov’s
voice from the next room.
“Where? At Bykov’s, at the rat’s... I knew it,” replied a piping voice, and
Lieutenant Telyánin, a small officer of the same squadron, entered the room.
Rostóv thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little hand which
was offered him. Telyánin for some reason had been transferred from the Guards
just before this campaign. He behaved very well in the regiment but was not
liked; Rostóv especially detested him and was unable to overcome or conceal his
groundless antipathy to the man.
“Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?” he asked. (Rook was a
young horse Telyánin had sold to Rostóv.)
The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in the face;
his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.
“I saw you riding this morning...” he added.
“Oh, he’s all right, a good horse,” answered Rostóv, though the horse for
which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half that sum. “He’s
begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg,” he added.
“The hoof’s cracked! That’s nothing. I’ll teach you what to do and show you
what kind of rivet to use.”
“Yes, please do,” said Rostóv.
“I’ll show you, I’ll show you! It’s not a secret. And it’s a horse you’ll thank
me for.”
“Then I’ll have it brought round,” said Rostóv wishing to avoid Telyánin, and
he went out to give the order.
In the passage Denísov, with a pipe, was squatting on the threshold facing the
quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing Rostóv, Denísov screwed up
his face and pointing over his shoulder with his thumb to the room where
Telyánin was sitting, he frowned and gave a shudder of disgust.
“Ugh! I don’t like that fellow,” he said, regardless of the quartermaster’s
presence.
Rostóv shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: “Nor do I, but what’s one to
do?” and, having given his order, he returned to Telyánin.
Telyánin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostóv had left him,
rubbing his small white hands.
“Well there certainly are disgusting people,” thought Rostóv as he entered.
“Have you told them to bring the horse?” asked Telyánin, getting up and
looking carelessly about him.
“I have.”
“Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denísov about yesterday’s
order. Have you got it, Denísov?”
“Not yet. But where are you off to?”
“I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse,” said Telyánin.
They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant explained
how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.
When Rostóv went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on the
table. Denísov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a sheet of paper. He
looked gloomily in Rostóv’s face and said: “I am witing to her.”
He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and, evidently glad
of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to write, told Rostóv the
contents of his letter.
“You see, my fwiend,” he said, “we sleep when we don’t love. We are
childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God, one is pua’ as on
the fihst day of cweation... Who’s that now? Send him to the devil, I’m busy!”
he shouted to Lavrúshka, who went up to him not in the least abashed.
“Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It’s the quartermaster for
the money.”
Denísov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.
“Wetched business,” he muttered to himself. “How much is left in the puhse?”
he asked, turning to Rostóv.
“Seven new and three old imperials.”
“Oh, it’s wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you sca’cwow? Call
the quahtehmasteh,” he shouted to Lavrúshka.
“Please, Denísov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know,” said Rostóv,
blushing.
“Don’t like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don’t,” growled Denísov.
“But if you won’t accept money from me like a comrade, you will offend me.
Really I have some,” Rostóv repeated.
“No, I tell you.”
And Denísov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.
“Where have you put it, Wostóv?”
“Under the lower pillow.”
“It’s not there.”
Denísov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.
“That’s a miwacle.”
“Wait, haven’t you dropped it?” said Rostóv, picking up the pillows one at a
time and shaking them.
He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.
“Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you kept it
under your head like a treasure,” said Rostóv. “I put it just here. Where is it?” he
asked, turning to Lavrúshka.
“I haven’t been in the room. It must be where you put it.”
“But it isn’t?...”
“You’re always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget it.
Feel in your pockets.”
“No, if I hadn’t thought of it being a treasure,” said Rostóv, “but I remember
putting it there.”
Lavrúshka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and under the
table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of the room. Denísov
silently watched Lavrúshka’s movements, and when the latter threw up his arms
in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found Denísov glanced at Rostóv.
“Wostóv, you’ve not been playing schoolboy twicks...”
Rostóv felt Denísov’s gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and instantly
dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested somewhere
below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not draw breath.
“And there hasn’t been anyone in the room except the lieutenant and
yourselves. It must be here somewhere,” said Lavrúshka.
“Now then, you devil’s puppet, look alive and hunt for it!” shouted Denísov,
suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man with a threatening gesture. “If
the purse isn’t found I’ll flog you, I’ll flog you all.”
Rostóv, his eyes avoiding Denísov, began buttoning his coat, buckled on his
saber, and put on his cap.
“I must have that purse, I tell you,” shouted Denísov, shaking his orderly by
the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.
“Denísov, let him alone, I know who has taken it,” said Rostóv, going toward
the door without raising his eyes. Denísov paused, thought a moment, and,
evidently understanding what Rostóv hinted at, seized his arm.
“Nonsense!” he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood out like
cords. “You are mad, I tell you. I won’t allow it. The purse is here! I’ll flay this
scoundwel alive, and it will be found.”
“I know who has taken it,” repeated Rostóv in an unsteady voice, and went to
the door.
“And I tell you, don’t you dahe to do it!” shouted Denísov, rushing at the
cadet to restrain him.
But Rostóv pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though Denísov
were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his face.
“Do you understand what you’re saying?” he said in a trembling voice. “There
was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it is not so, then...”
He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
“Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody,” were the last words Rostóv
heard.
Rostóv went to Telyánin’s quarters.
“The master is not in, he’s gone to headquarters,” said Telyánin’s orderly.
“Has something happened?” he added, surprised at the cadet’s troubled face.
“No, nothing.”
“You’ve only just missed him,” said the orderly.
The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and Rostóv,
without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was an inn in the
village which the officers frequented. Rostóv rode up to it and saw Telyánin’s
horse at the porch.
In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish of sausages
and a bottle of wine.
“Ah, you’ve come here too, young man!” he said, smiling and raising his
eyebrows.
“Yes,” said Rostóv as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word; and he sat
down at the nearest table.
Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in the room.
No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of knives and the
munching of the lieutenant.
When Telyánin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a double purse
and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white, turned-up fingers, drew out a
gold imperial, and lifting his eyebrows gave it to the waiter.
“Please be quick,” he said.
The coin was a new one. Rostóv rose and went up to Telyánin.
“Allow me to look at your purse,” he said in a low, almost inaudible, voice.
With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyánin handed him the purse.
“Yes, it’s a nice purse. Yes, yes,” he said, growing suddenly pale, and added,
“Look at it, young man.”
Rostóv took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in it, and looked
at Telyánin. The lieutenant was looking about in his usual way and suddenly
seemed to grow very merry.
“If we get to Vienna I’ll get rid of it there but in these wretched little towns
there’s nowhere to spend it,” said he. “Well, let me have it, young man, I’m
going.”
Rostóv did not speak.
“And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite decently
here,” continued Telyánin. “Now then, let me have it.”
He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostóv let go of it.
Telyánin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into the pocket of his
riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his mouth slightly open, as if to
say, “Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my pocket and that’s quite simple and is
no one else’s business.”
“Well, young man?” he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted brows he
glanced into Rostóv’s eyes.
Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyánin’s eyes to Rostóv’s and
back, and back again and again in an instant.
“Come here,” said Rostóv, catching hold of Telyánin’s arm and almost
dragging him to the window. “That money is Denísov’s; you took it...” he
whispered just above Telyánin’s ear.
“What? What? How dare you? What?” said Telyánin.
But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an entreaty for
pardon. As soon as Rostóv heard them, an enormous load of doubt fell from him.
He was glad, and at the same instant began to pity the miserable man who stood
before him, but the task he had begun had to be completed.
“Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine,” muttered Telyánin,
taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room. “We must have an
explanation...”
“I know it and shall prove it,” said Rostóv.
“I...”
Every muscle of Telyánin’s pale, terrified face began to quiver, his eyes still
shifted from side to side but with a downward look not rising to Rostóv’s face,
and his sobs were audible.
“Count!... Don’t ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money, take it...”
He threw it on the table. “I have an old father and mother!...”
Rostóv took the money, avoiding Telyánin’s eyes, and went out of the room
without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced his steps. “O God,”
he said with tears in his eyes, “how could you do it?”
“Count...” said Telyánin drawing nearer to him.
“Don’t touch me,” said Rostóv, drawing back. “If you need it, take the
money,” and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.
CHAPTER V
That same evening there was an animated discussion among the squadron’s
officers in Denísov’s quarters.
“And I tell you, Rostóv, that you must apologize to the colonel!” said a tall,
grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and many wrinkles on his
large features, to Rostóv who was crimson with excitement.
The staff captain, Kírsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks for affairs of
honor and had twice regained his commission.
“I will allow no one to call me a liar!” cried Rostóv. “He told me I lied, and I
told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on duty every day, or may
place me under arrest, but no one can make me apologize, because if he, as
commander of this regiment, thinks it beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction,
then...”
“You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen,” interrupted the staff
captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache. “You tell the colonel
in the presence of other officers that an officer has stolen...”
“I’m not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of other
officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but I am not a
diplomatist. That’s why I joined the hussars, thinking that here one would not
need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying—so let him give me satisfaction...”
“That’s all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that’s not the point. Ask
Denísov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to demand satisfaction
of his regimental commander?”
Denísov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the conversation,
evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered the staff captain’s question
by a disapproving shake of his head.
“You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other officers,”
continued the staff captain, “and Bogdánich” (the colonel was called Bogdánich)
“shuts you up.”
“He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth.”
“Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and must
apologize.”
“Not on any account!” exclaimed Rostóv.
“I did not expect this of you,” said the staff captain seriously and severely.
“You don’t wish to apologize, but, man, it’s not only to him but to the whole
regiment—all of us—you’re to blame all round. The case is this: you ought to
have thought the matter over and taken advice; but no, you go and blurt it all
straight out before the officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the
officer tried and disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment
because of one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don’t see it like that.
And Bogdánich was a brick: he told you you were saying what was not true. It’s
not pleasant, but what’s to be done, my dear fellow? You landed yourself in it.
And now, when one wants to smooth the thing over, some conceit prevents your
apologizing, and you wish to make the whole affair public. You are offended at
being put on duty a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer?
Whatever Bogdánich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel!
You’re quick at taking offense, but you don’t mind disgracing the whole
regiment!” The staff captain’s voice began to tremble. “You have been in the
regiment next to no time, my lad, you’re here today and tomorrow you’ll be
appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your fingers when it is said ‘There
are thieves among the Pávlograd officers!’ But it’s not all the same to us! Am I
not right, Denísov? It’s not the same!”
Denísov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked with his
glittering black eyes at Rostóv.
“You value your own pride and don’t wish to apologize,” continued the staff
captain, “but we old fellows, who have grown up in and, God willing, are going
to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of the regiment, and Bogdánich knows
it. Oh, we do prize it, old fellow! And all this is not right, it’s not right! You may
take offense or not but I always stick to mother truth. It’s not right!”
And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostóv.
“That’s twue, devil take it!” shouted Denísov, jumping up. “Now then,
Wostóv, now then!”
Rostóv, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one officer and then at
the other.
“No, gentlemen, no... you mustn’t think... I quite understand. You’re wrong to
think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of the regiment I’d... Ah well, I’ll
show that in action, and for me the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it’s true
I’m to blame, to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?...”
“Come, that’s right, Count!” cried the staff captain, turning round and
clapping Rostóv on the shoulder with his big hand.
“I tell you,” shouted Denísov, “he’s a fine fellow.”
“That’s better, Count,” said the staff captain, beginning to address Rostóv by
his title, as if in recognition of his confession. “Go and apologize, your
excellency. Yes, go!”
“Gentlemen, I’ll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,” said Rostóv
in an imploring voice, “but I can’t apologize, by God I can’t, do what you will!
How can I go and apologize like a little boy asking forgiveness?”
Denísov began to laugh.
“It’ll be worse for you. Bogdánich is vindictive and you’ll pay for your
obstinacy,” said Kírsten.
“No, on my word it’s not obstinacy! I can’t describe the feeling. I can’t...”
“Well, it’s as you like,” said the staff captain. “And what has become of that
scoundrel?” he asked Denísov.
“He has weported himself sick, he’s to be stwuck off the list tomowwow,”
muttered Denísov.
“It is an illness, there’s no other way of explaining it,” said the staff captain.
“Illness or not, he’d better not cwoss my path. I’d kill him!” shouted Denísov
in a bloodthirsty tone.
Just then Zherkóv entered the room.
“What brings you here?” cried the officers turning to the newcomer.
“We’re to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his whole
army.”
“It’s not true!”
“I’ve seen him myself!”
“What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?”
“Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how did you
come here?”
“I’ve been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil, Mack. An
Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on Mack’s arrival...
What’s the matter, Rostóv? You look as if you’d just come out of a hot bath.”
“Oh, my dear fellow, we’re in such a stew here these last two days.”
The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by Zherkóv.
They were under orders to advance next day.
“We’re going into action, gentlemen!”
“Well, thank God! We’ve been sitting here too long!”
CHAPTER VI
Kutúzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges over the
rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October 23 the Russian troops
were crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian baggage train, the artillery,
and columns of troops were defiling through the town of Enns on both sides of
the bridge.
It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out before
the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the bridge was at
times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and then, suddenly spread
out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could be clearly seen glittering as though
freshly varnished. Down below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-
roofed houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed
jostling masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels, an island,
and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the confluence of the Enns
and the Danube became visible, and the rocky left bank of the Danube covered
with pine forests, with a mystic background of green treetops and bluish gorges.
The turrets of a convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far away
on the other side of the Enns the enemy’s horse patrols could be discerned.
Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in command of the
rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the country through his fieldglass.
A little behind them Nesvítski, who had been sent to the rearguard by the
commander in chief, was sitting on the trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who
accompanied him had handed him a knapsack and a flask, and Nesvítski was
treating some officers to pies and real doppelkümmel. The officers gladly
gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting Turkish fashion on the
wet grass.
“Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It’s a fine place!
Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?” Nesvítski was saying.
“Thank you very much, Prince,” answered one of the officers, pleased to be
talking to a staff officer of such importance. “It’s a lovely place! We passed close
to the park and saw two deer... and what a splendid house!”
“Look, Prince,” said another, who would have dearly liked to take another pie
but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining the countryside—“See, our
infantrymen have already got there. Look there in the meadow behind the
village, three of them are dragging something. They’ll ransack that castle,” he
remarked with evident approval.
“So they will,” said Nesvítski. “No, but what I should like,” added he,
munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, “would be to slip in over
there.”
He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed and
gleamed.
“That would be fine, gentlemen!”
The officers laughed.
“Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls among them. On
my word I’d give five years of my life for it!”
“They must be feeling dull, too,” said one of the bolder officers, laughing.
Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out something to the
general, who looked through his field glass.
“Yes, so it is, so it is,” said the general angrily, lowering the field glass and
shrugging his shoulders, “so it is! They’ll be fired on at the crossing. And why
are they dawdling there?”
On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and from their
battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant report of a shot, and our
troops could be seen hurrying to the crossing.
Nesvítski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.
“Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?” he said.
“It’s a bad business,” said the general without answering him, “our men have
been wasting time.”
“Hadn’t I better ride over, your excellency?” asked Nesvítski.
“Yes, please do,” answered the general, and he repeated the order that had
already once been given in detail: “and tell the hussars that they are to cross last
and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the inflammable material on the bridge
must be reinspected.”
“Very good,” answered Nesvítski.
He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the knapsack and
flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.
“I’ll really call in on the nuns,” he said to the officers who watched him
smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the hill.
“Now then, let’s see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!” said the general,
turning to an artillery officer. “Have a little fun to pass the time.”
“Crew, to your guns!” commanded the officer.
In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and began
loading.
“One!” came the command.
Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening metallic
roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our troops below the hill
and fell far short of the enemy, a little smoke showing the spot where it burst.
The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone got up
and began watching the movements of our troops below, as plainly visible as if
but a stone’s throw away, and the movements of the approaching enemy farther
off. At the same instant the sun came fully out from behind the clouds, and the
clear sound of the solitary shot and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged
in a single joyous and spirited impression.
CHAPTER VII
Two of the enemy’s shots had already flown across the bridge, where there
was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvítski, who had alighted from his
horse and whose big body was jammed against the railings. He looked back
laughing to the Cossack who stood a few steps behind him holding two horses
by their bridles. Each time Prince Nesvítski tried to move on, soldiers and carts
pushed him back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he could do
was to smile.
“What a fine fellow you are, friend!” said the Cossack to a convoy soldier
with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were crowded
together close to his wheels and his horses. “What a fellow! You can’t wait a
moment! Don’t you see the general wants to pass?”
But the convoyman took no notice of the word “general” and shouted at the
soldiers who were blocking his way. “Hi there, boys! Keep to the left! Wait a
bit.” But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to shoulder, their bayonets
interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense mass. Looking down over the
rails Prince Nesvítski saw the rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which
rippling and eddying round the piles of the bridge chased each other along.
Looking on the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder
straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, under the
shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired
expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks
of the bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of
white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of
face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a
chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a townsman
was carried through the waves of infantry; and sometimes like a log floating
down the river, an officers’ or company’s baggage wagon, piled high, leather
covered, and hemmed in on all sides, moved across the bridge.
“It’s as if a dam had burst,” said the Cossack hopelessly. “Are there many
more of you to come?”
“A million all but one!” replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat, with a wink,
and passed on followed by another, an old man.
“If he” (he meant the enemy) “begins popping at the bridge now,” said the old
soldier dismally to a comrade, “you’ll forget to scratch yourself.”
That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a cart.
“Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?” said an orderly, running
behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.
And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry soldiers who
had evidently been drinking.
“And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt end of his
gun...” a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said gaily, with a wide
swing of his arm.
“Yes, the ham was just delicious...” answered another with a loud laugh. And
they, too, passed on, so that Nesvítski did not learn who had been struck on the
teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.
“Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they’ll all be
killed,” a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.
“As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean,” said a young soldier with an
enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, “I felt like dying of fright. I
did, ‘pon my word, I got that frightened!” said he, as if bragging of having been
frightened.
That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had gone before. It
was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a German, and seemed loaded
with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow with a large udder was
attached to the cart behind. A woman with an unweaned baby, an old woman,
and a healthy German girl with bright red cheeks were sitting on some feather
beds. Evidently these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission. The
eyes of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was
passing at foot pace all the soldiers’ remarks related to the two young ones.
Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts about the
women.
“Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!”
“Sell me the missis,” said another soldier, addressing the German, who, angry
and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast eyes.
“See how smart she’s made herself! Oh, the devils!”
“There, Fedótov, you should be quartered on them!”
“I have seen as much before now, mate!”
“Where are you going?” asked an infantry officer who was eating an apple,
also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.
The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.
“Take it if you like,” said the officer, giving the girl an apple.
The girl smiled and took it. Nesvítski like the rest of the men on the bridge did
not take his eyes off the women till they had passed. When they had gone by, the
same stream of soldiers followed, with the same kind of talk, and at last all
stopped. As often happens, the horses of a convoy wagon became restive at the
end of the bridge, and the whole crowd had to wait.
“And why are they stopping? There’s no proper order!” said the soldiers.
“Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can’t you wait? It’ll be worse if he
fires the bridge. See, here’s an officer jammed in too”—different voices were
saying in the crowd, as the men looked at one another, and all pressed toward the
exit from the bridge.
Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvítski suddenly
heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching... something big,
that splashed into the water.
“Just see where it carries to!” a soldier near by said sternly, looking round at
the sound.
“Encouraging us to get along quicker,” said another uneasily.
The crowd moved on again. Nesvítski realized that it was a cannon ball.
“Hey, Cossack, my horse!” he said. “Now, then, you there! get out of the way!
Make way!”
With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting continually
he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make way for him, but again
pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and those nearest him were not to
blame for they were themselves pressed still harder from behind.
“Nesvítski, Nesvítski! you numskull!” came a hoarse voice from behind him.
Nesvítski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but separated by the
living mass of moving infantry, Váska Denísov, red and shaggy, with his cap on
the back of his black head and a cloak hanging jauntily over his shoulder.
“Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!” shouted Denísov evidently in
a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot whites glittering and rolling
as he waved his sheathed saber in a small bare hand as red as his face.
“Ah, Váska!” joyfully replied Nesvítski. “What’s up with you?”
“The squadwon can’t pass,” shouted Váska Denísov, showing his white teeth
fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which twitched its ears as the
bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting white foam from his bit, tramping the
planks of the bridge with his hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the
railings had his rider let him. “What is this? They’re like sheep! Just like sheep!
Out of the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! I’ll hack you
with my saber!” he shouted, actually drawing his saber from its scabbard and
flourishing it.
The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and Denísov
joined Nesvítski.
“How’s it you’re not drunk today?” said Nesvítski when the other had ridden
up to him.
“They don’t even give one time to dwink!” answered Váska Denísov. “They
keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to fight, let’s fight.
But the devil knows what this is.”
“What a dandy you are today!” said Nesvítski, looking at Denísov’s new cloak
and saddlecloth.
Denísov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that diffused a
smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvítski’s nose.
“Of course. I’m going into action! I’ve shaved, bwushed my teeth, and
scented myself.”
The imposing figure of Nesvítski followed by his Cossack, and the
determination of Denísov who flourished his sword and shouted frantically, had
such an effect that they managed to squeeze through to the farther side of the
bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the bridge Nesvítski found the colonel to
whom he had to deliver the order, and having done this he rode back.
Having cleared the way Denísov stopped at the end of the bridge. Carelessly
holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the ground, eager to rejoin
its fellows, he watched his squadron draw nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of
several horses galloping, resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the
squadron, officers in front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and
began to emerge on his side of it.
The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the trampled
mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will, estrangement, and ridicule
with which troops of different arms usually encounter one another at the clean,
smart hussars who moved past them in regular order.
“Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!” said one.
“What good are they? They’re led about just for show!” remarked another.
“Don’t kick up the dust, you infantry!” jested an hussar whose prancing horse
had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.
“I’d like to put you on a two days’ march with a knapsack! Your fine cords
would soon get a bit rubbed,” said an infantryman, wiping the mud off his face
with his sleeve. “Perched up there, you’re more like a bird than a man.”
“There now, Zíkin, they ought to put you on a horse. You’d look fine,” said a
corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent under the weight of his knapsack.
“Take a stick between your legs, that’ll suit you for a horse!” the hussar
shouted back.
CHAPTER VIII
The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing together as
they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last the baggage wagons
had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last battalion came onto the bridge.
Only Denísov’s squadron of hussars remained on the farther side of the bridge
facing the enemy, who could be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was
not yet visible from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through
which the river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile away.
At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of our Cossack
scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the high ground, artillery
and troops in blue uniform were seen. These were the French. A group of
Cossack scouts retired down the hill at a trot. All the officers and men of
Denísov’s squadron, though they tried to talk of other things and to look in other
directions, thought only of what was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly
looking at the patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the
enemy’s troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun was
descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around it. It was calm,
and at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of the enemy could be heard from
the hill. There was no one now between the squadron and the enemy except a
few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some seven hundred yards was all
that separated them. The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening,
inaccessible, and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the
more clearly felt.
“One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing the
living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And what is there?
Who is there?—there beyond that field, that tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No
one knows, but one wants to know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and
know that sooner or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is
there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death.
But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other
such excitedly animated and healthy men.” So thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone
who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and
glad keenness of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.
On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon rose, and a
ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron. The officers who had
been standing together rode off to their places. The hussars began carefully
aligning their horses. Silence fell on the whole squadron. All were looking at the
enemy in front and at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of command.
A second and a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the
hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads of the
horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not look round, but
at the sound of each shot, as at the word of command, the whole squadron with
its rows of faces so alike yet so different, holding its breath while the ball flew
past, rose in the stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers without turning their
heads glanced at one another, curious to see their comrades’ impression. Every
face, from Denísov’s to that of the bugler, showed one common expression of
conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and mouth. The quartermaster
frowned, looking at the soldiers as if threatening to punish them. Cadet Mirónov
ducked every time a ball flew past. Rostóv on the left flank, mounted on his
Rook—a handsome horse despite its game leg—had the happy air of a
schoolboy called up before a large audience for an examination in which he feels
sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear, bright
expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under fire. But despite
himself, on his face too that same indication of something new and stern showed
round the mouth.
“Who’s that curtseying there? Cadet Miwónov! That’s not wight! Look at
me,” cried Denísov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept turning his horse
in front of the squadron.
The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Váska Denísov, and his whole short
sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in which he held the
hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually did, especially toward evening
when he had emptied his second bottle; he was only redder than usual. With his
shaggy head thrown back like birds when they drink, pressing his spurs
mercilessly into the sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though
falling backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the squadron
and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode up to
Kírsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a walk to
meet him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always, only his eyes
were brighter than usual.
“Well, what about it?” said he to Denísov. “It won’t come to a fight. You’ll see
—we shall retire.”
“The devil only knows what they’re about!” muttered Denísov. “Ah, Wostóv,”
he cried noticing the cadet’s bright face, “you’ve got it at last.”
And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostóv felt
perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge. Denísov
galloped up to him.
“Your excellency! Let us attack them! I’ll dwive them off.”
“Attack indeed!” said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his face as if
driving off a troublesome fly. “And why are you stopping here? Don’t you see
the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron back.”
The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire without having
lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in the front line followed
them across and the last Cossacks quitted the farther side of the river.
The two Pávlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the hill
one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdánich Schubert, came up to
Denísov’s squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostóv, without taking
any notice of him although they were now meeting for the first time since their
encounter concerning Telyánin. Rostóv, feeling that he was at the front and in the
power of a man toward whom he now admitted that he had been to blame, did
not lift his eyes from the colonel’s athletic back, his nape covered with light hair,
and his red neck. It seemed to Rostóv that Bogdánich was only pretending not to
notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet’s courage, so he
drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that
Bogdánich rode so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that
his enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish him—
Rostóv. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdánich would come up to
him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the hand of
reconciliation.
The high-shouldered figure of Zherkóv, familiar to the Pávlograds as he had
but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After his dismissal from
headquarters Zherkóv had not remained in the regiment, saying he was not such
a fool as to slave at the front when he could get more rewards by doing nothing
on the staff, and had succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to
Prince Bagratión. He now came to his former chief with an order from the
commander of the rear guard.
“Colonel,” he said, addressing Rostóv’s enemy with an air of gloomy gravity
and glancing round at his comrades, “there is an order to stop and fire the
bridge.”
“An order to who?” asked the colonel morosely.
“I don’t myself know ‘to who,’” replied the cornet in a serious tone, “but the
prince told me to ‘go and tell the colonel that the hussars must return quickly and
fire the bridge.’”
Zherkóv was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the colonel of
hussars with the same order. After him the stout Nesvítski came galloping up on
a Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his weight.
“How’s this, Colonel?” he shouted as he approached. “I told you to fire the
bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are all beside themselves
over there and one can’t make anything out.”
The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to Nesvítski.
“You spoke to me of inflammable material,” said he, “but you said nothing
about firing it.”
“But, my dear sir,” said Nesvítski as he drew up, taking off his cap and
smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand, “wasn’t I telling
you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material had been put in position?”
“I am not your ‘dear sir,’ Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell me to burn the
bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders strictly to obey. You said the
bridge would be burned, but who would it burn, I could not know by the holy
spirit!”
“Ah, that’s always the way!” said Nesvítski with a wave of the hand. “How
did you get here?” said he, turning to Zherkóv.
“On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!”
“You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer...” continued the colonel in an offended
tone.
“Colonel,” interrupted the officer of the suite, “You must be quick or the
enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot.”
The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the stout staff officer,
and at Zherkóv, and he frowned.
“I will the bridge fire,” he said in a solemn tone as if to announce that in spite
of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would still do the right thing.
Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to blame for
everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second squadron, that in
which Rostóv was serving under Denísov, to return to the bridge.
“There, it’s just as I thought,” said Rostóv to himself. “He wishes to test me!”
His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his face. “Let him see whether I am
a coward!” he thought.
Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression appeared
that they had worn when under fire. Rostóv watched his enemy, the colonel,
closely—to find in his face confirmation of his own conjecture, but the colonel
did not once glance at Rostóv, and looked as he always did when at the front,
solemn and stern. Then came the word of command.
“Look sharp! Look sharp!” several voices repeated around him.
Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the hussars hastily
dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The men were crossing
themselves. Rostóv no longer looked at the colonel, he had no time. He was
afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His
hand trembled as he gave his horse into an orderly’s charge, and he felt the blood
rush to his heart with a thud. Denísov rode past him, leaning back and shouting
something. Rostóv saw nothing but the hussars running all around him, their
spurs catching and their sabers clattering.
“Stretchers!” shouted someone behind him.
Rostóv did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on, trying only
to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not looking at the ground, he
came on some sticky, trodden mud, stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others
outstripped him.
“At boss zides, Captain,” he heard the voice of the colonel, who, having
ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a triumphant,
cheerful face.
Rostóv wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy and was
about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front the better. But
Bogdánich, without looking at or recognizing Rostóv, shouted to him:
“Who’s that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right! Come back,
Cadet!” he cried angrily; and turning to Denísov, who, showing off his courage,
had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
“Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount,” he said.
“Oh, every bullet has its billet,” answered Váska Denísov, turning in his
saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvítski, Zherkóv, and the officer of the suite were standing
together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small group of men with
yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord, and blue riding breeches,
who were swarming near the bridge, and then at what was approaching in the
distance from the opposite side—the blue uniforms and groups with horses,
easily recognizable as artillery.
“Will they burn the bridge or not? Who’ll get there first? Will they get there
and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot range and wipe them
out?” These were the questions each man of the troops on the high ground above
the bridge involuntarily asked himself with a sinking heart—watching the bridge
and the hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from
the other side with their bayonets and guns.
“Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!” said Nesvítski; “they are within grapeshot
range now.”
“He shouldn’t have taken so many men,” said the officer of the suite.
“True enough,” answered Nesvítski; “two smart fellows could have done the
job just as well.”
“Ah, your excellency,” put in Zherkóv, his eyes fixed on the hussars, but still
with that naïve air that made it impossible to know whether he was speaking in
jest or in earnest. “Ah, your excellency! How you look at things! Send two men?
And who then would give us the Vladímir medal and ribbon? But now, even if
they do get peppered, the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may
get a ribbon. Our Bogdánich knows how things are done.”
“There now!” said the officer of the suite, “that’s grapeshot.”
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being detached and
hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke appeared,
then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at the moment when the
first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two reports one after another, and
a third.
“Oh! Oh!” groaned Nesvítski as if in fierce pain, seizing the officer of the
suite by the arm. “Look! A man has fallen! Fallen, fallen!”
“Two, I think.”
“If I were Tsar I would never go to war,” said Nesvítski, turning away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue uniforms
advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but at irregular
intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the bridge. But this time
Nesvítski could not see what was happening there, as a dense cloud of smoke
arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in setting it on fire and the French
batteries were now firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns
were trained and there was someone to fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the hussars got
back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot went too high, but the
last round fell in the midst of a group of hussars and knocked three of them over.
Rostóv, absorbed by his relations with Bogdánich, had paused on the bridge
not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he had always
imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the bridge because he had
not brought any burning straw with him like the other soldiers. He stood looking
about him, when suddenly he heard a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being
spilt, and the hussar nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostóv ran
up to him with the others. Again someone shouted, “Stretchers!” Four men
seized the hussar and began lifting him.
“Oooh! For Christ’s sake let me alone!” cried the wounded man, but still he
was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
Nicholas Rostóv turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed into
the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the sun. How
beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and
glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant
Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the
river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist
of their summits... There was peace and happiness... “I should wish for nothing
else, nothing, if only I were there,” thought Rostóv. “In myself alone and in that
sunshine there is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this
uncertainty and hurry... There—they are shouting again, and again are all
running back somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above
me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see the sun, this water,
that gorge!...”
At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other stretchers
came into view before Rostóv. And the fear of death and of the stretchers, and
love of the sun and of life, all merged into one feeling of sickening agitation.
“O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect me!”
Rostóv whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their voices sounded
louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.
“Well, fwiend? So you’ve smelt powdah!” shouted Váska Denísov just above
his ear.
“It’s all over; but I am a coward—yes, a coward!” thought Rostóv, and sighing
deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one foot, from the orderly
and began to mount.
“Was that grapeshot?” he asked Denísov.
“Yes and no mistake!” cried Denísov. “You worked like wegular bwicks and
it’s nasty work! An attack’s pleasant work! Hacking away at the dogs! But this
sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting at you like a target.”
And Denísov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostóv, composed of
the colonel, Nesvítski, Zherkóv, and the officer from the suite.
“Well, it seems that no one has noticed,” thought Rostóv. And this was true.
No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation which the cadet
under fire for the first time had experienced.
“Here’s something for you to report,” said Zherkóv. “See if I don’t get
promoted to a sublieutenancy.”
“Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!” said the colonel triumphantly and
gaily.
“And if he asks about the losses?”
“A trifle,” said the colonel in his bass voice: “two hussars wounded, and one
knocked out,” he added, unable to restrain a happy smile, and pronouncing the
phrase “knocked out” with ringing distinctness.
CHAPTER IX
Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the command
of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it, losing
confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies, and compelled to
act under conditions of war unlike anything that had been foreseen, the Russian
army of thirty-five thousand men commanded by Kutúzov was hurriedly
retreating along the Danube, stopping where overtaken by the enemy and
fighting rearguard actions only as far as necessary to enable it to retreat without
losing its heavy equipment. There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and
Melk; but despite the courage and endurance—acknowledged even by the enemy
—with which the Russians fought, the only consequence of these actions was a
yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had escaped capture at Ulm and had
joined Kutúzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and Kutúzov
was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces. The defense of Vienna
was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which,
carefully prepared in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been
handed to Kutúzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the
sole and almost unattainable aim remaining for him was to effect a junction with
the forces that were advancing from Russia, without losing his army as Mack
had done at Ulm.
On the twenty-eighth of October Kutúzov with his army crossed to the left
bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with the river
between himself and the main body of the French. On the thirtieth he attacked
Mortier’s division, which was on the left bank, and broke it up. In this action for
the first time trophies were taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For
the first time, after a fortnight’s retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a
fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the French. Though the troops
were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of their number in killed, wounded,
sick, and stragglers; though a number of sick and wounded had been abandoned
on the other side of the Danube with a letter in which Kutúzov entrusted them to
the humanity of the enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in
Krems converted into military hospitals could no longer accommodate all the
sick and wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory over Mortier
raised the spirits of the army considerably. Throughout the whole army and at
headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors were rife of the imaginary
approach of columns from Russia, of some victory gained by the Austrians, and
of the retreat of the frightened Bonaparte.
Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the Austrian
General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse had been wounded
under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a mark of the
commander in chief’s special favor he was sent with the news of this victory to
the Austrian court, now no longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the
French) but at Brünn. Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could
endure physical fatigue far better than many very muscular men, and on the
night of the battle, having arrived at Krems excited but not weary, with
dispatches from Dokhtúrov to Kutúzov, he was sent immediately with a special
dispatch to Brünn. To be so sent meant not only a reward but an important step
toward promotion.
The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow that had
fallen the previous day—the day of the battle. Reviewing his impressions of the
recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself the impression his news of a victory
would create, or recalling the send-off given him by the commander in chief and
his fellow officers, Prince Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise enjoying
the feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a long-desired happiness.
As soon as he closed his eyes his ears seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels
and the sensation of victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were
running away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly roused himself with
a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that this was not so but that on the contrary
the French had run away. He again recalled all the details of the victory and his
own calm courage during the battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The
dark starry night was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was
thawing in the sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the
road were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.
At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded. The
Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the front cart, shouting
and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each of the long German carts six or
more pale, dirty, bandaged men were being jolted over the stony road. Some of
them were talking (he heard Russian words), others were eating bread; the more
severely wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children, at
the envoy hurrying past them.
Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what action they
had been wounded. “Day before yesterday, on the Danube,” answered the
soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the soldier three gold pieces.
“That’s for them all,” he said to the officer who came up.
“Get well soon, lads!” he continued, turning to the soldiers. “There’s plenty to
do still.”
“What news, sir?” asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a conversation.
“Good news!... Go on!” he shouted to the driver, and they galloped on.
It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the paved streets of
Brünn and found himself surrounded by high buildings, the lights of shops,
houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that atmosphere of a large and
active town which is always so attractive to a soldier after camp life. Despite his
rapid journey and sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace
felt even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day before. Only his eyes
gleamed feverishly and his thoughts followed one another with extraordinary
clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the details of the battle, no
longer dim, but definite and in the concise form in which he imagined himself
stating them to the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions
that might be put to him and the answers he would give. He expected to be at
once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the palace, however, an
official came running out to meet him, and learning that he was a special
messenger led him to another entrance.
“To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will find the
adjutant on duty,” said the official. “He will conduct you to the Minister of War.”
The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait, and went in
to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and bowing with particular
courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along a corridor to the cabinet
where the Minister of War was at work. The adjutant by his elaborate courtesy
appeared to wish to ward off any attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian
messenger.
Prince Andrew’s joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he approached
the door of the minister’s room. He felt offended, and without his noticing it the
feeling of offense immediately turned into one of disdain which was quite
uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly suggested to him a point of view which
gave him a right to despise the adjutant and the minister. “Away from the smell
of powder, they probably think it easy to gain victories!” he thought. His eyes
narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with
peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened when he saw
the minister seated at a large table reading some papers and making pencil notes
on them, and for the first two or three minutes taking no notice of his arrival. A
wax candle stood at each side of the minister’s bent bald head with its gray
temples. He went on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening
of the door and the sound of footsteps.
“Take this and deliver it,” said he to his adjutant, handing him the papers and
still taking no notice of the special messenger.
Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutúzov’s army interested the
Minister of War less than any of the other matters he was concerned with, or he
wanted to give the Russian special messenger that impression. “But that is a
matter of perfect indifference to me,” he thought. The minister drew the
remaining papers together, arranged them evenly, and then raised his head. He
had an intellectual and distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince
Andrew the firm, intelligent expression on his face changed in a way evidently
deliberate and habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial smile (which
does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man who is continually
receiving many petitioners one after another.
“From General Field Marshal Kutúzov?” he asked. “I hope it is good news?
There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high time!”
He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it with a
mournful expression.
“Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!” he exclaimed in German. “What a
calamity! What a calamity!”
Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and looked at
Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.
“Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is not
captured.” Again he pondered. “I am very glad you have brought good news,
though Schmidt’s death is a heavy price to pay for the victory. His Majesty will
no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I thank you! You must have a rest. Be at
the levee tomorrow after the parade. However, I will let you know.”
The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking, reappeared.
“Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to see
you,” he added, bowing his head.
When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and happiness
the victory had afforded him had been now left in the indifferent hands of the
Minister of War and the polite adjutant. The whole tenor of his thoughts
instantaneously changed; the battle seemed the memory of a remote event long
past.
CHAPTER X
Prince Andrew stayed at Brünn with Bilíbin, a Russian acquaintance of his in
the diplomatic service.
“Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,” said Bilíbin as
he came out to meet Prince Andrew. “Franz, put the prince’s things in my
bedroom,” said he to the servant who was ushering Bolkónski in. “So you’re a
messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see.”
After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat’s
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilíbin settled
down comfortably beside the fire.
After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived of all
the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, Prince Andrew felt a
pleasant sense of repose among luxurious surroundings such as he had been
accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant, after his reception by the
Austrians, to speak if not in Russian (for they were speaking French) at least
with a Russian who would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to
the Austrians which was then particularly strong.
Bilíbin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle as Prince
Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but had become
more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutúzov. Just as Prince
Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high in the military
profession, so to an even greater extent Bilíbin gave promise of rising in his
diplomatic career. He still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he
had entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris and Copenhagen,
and now held a rather important post in Vienna. Both the foreign minister and
our ambassador in Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those
many diplomats who are esteemed because they have certain negative qualities,
avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one of those, who, liking
work, knew how to do it, and despite his indolence would sometimes spend a
whole night at his writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his
work. It was not the question “What for?” but the question “How?” that
interested him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care, but it gave
him great pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully,
pointedly, and elegantly. Bilíbin’s services were valued not only for what he
wrote, but also for his skill in dealing and conversing with those in the highest
spheres.
Bilíbin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be made
elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to say something
striking and took part in a conversation only when that was possible. His
conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original, finished phrases of
general interest. These sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind
in a portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society people might
carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in fact, Bilíbin’s
witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an
influence on matters considered important.
His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always
looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one’s fingers after a Russian bath.
The movement of these wrinkles formed the principal play of expression on his
face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds and his eyebrows were
lifted, then his eyebrows would descend and deep wrinkles would crease his
cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.
“Well, now tell me about your exploits,” said he.
Bolkónski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the
engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.
“They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of skittles,”
said he in conclusion.
Bilíbin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
“Cependant, mon cher,” he remarked, examining his nails from a distance and
puckering the skin above his left eye, “malgré la haute estime que je professe
pour the Orthodox Russian army, j’avoue que votre victoire n’est pas des plus
victorieuses.” *
* “But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox
Russian army, I must say that your victory was not
particularly victorious.”
He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in Russian
on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.
“Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier and his
one division, and even then Mortier slips through your fingers! Where’s the
victory?”
“But seriously,” said Prince Andrew, “we can at any rate say without boasting
that it was a little better than at Ulm...”
“Why didn’t you capture one, just one, marshal for us?”
“Because not everything happens as one expects or with the smoothness of a
parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at their rear by seven in the
morning but had not reached it by five in the afternoon.”
“And why didn’t you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have been
there at seven in the morning,” returned Bilíbin with a smile. “You ought to have
been there at seven in the morning.”
“Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic methods
that he had better leave Genoa alone?” retorted Prince Andrew in the same tone.
“I know,” interrupted Bilíbin, “you’re thinking it’s very easy to take marshals,
sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but still why didn’t you capture him? So
don’t be surprised if not only the Minister of War but also his Most August
Majesty the Emperor and King Francis is not much delighted by your victory.
Even I, a poor secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of
my joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to the Prater...
True, we have no Prater here...”
He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his forehead.
“It is now my turn to ask you ‘why?’ mon cher,” said Bolkónski. “I confess I
do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties here beyond my feeble
intelligence, but I can’t make it out. Mack loses a whole army, the Archduke
Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl give no signs of life and make blunder after
blunder. Kutúzov alone at last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the
invincibility of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear
the details.”
“That’s just it, my dear fellow. You see it’s hurrah for the Tsar, for Russia, for
the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but what do we, I mean the
Austrian court, care for your victories? Bring us nice news of a victory by the
Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one archduke’s as good as another, as you know)
and even if it is only over a fire brigade of Bonaparte’s, that will be another story
and we’ll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on purpose to
vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke Ferdinand disgraces
himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its defense—as much as to say: ‘Heaven
is with us, but heaven help you and your capital!’ The one general whom we all
loved, Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the
victory! Admit that more irritating news than yours could not have been
conceived. It’s as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose
you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a victory, what
effect would that have on the general course of events? It’s too late now when
Vienna is occupied by the French army!”
“What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?”
“Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schönbrunn, and the count, our dear
Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders.”
After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and especially
after having dined, Bolkónski felt that he could not take in the full significance
of the words he heard.
“Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,” Bilíbin continued, “and showed
me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was fully described:
Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that your victory is not a matter
for great rejoicing and that you can’t be received as a savior.”
“Really I don’t care about that, I don’t care at all,” said Prince Andrew,
beginning to understand that his news of the battle before Krems was really of
small importance in view of such events as the fall of Austria’s capital. “How is
it Vienna was taken? What of the bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince
Auersperg? We heard reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?” he
said.
“Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is defending us—
doing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending us. But Vienna is on the
other side. No, the bridge has not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is
mined and orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago
have been in the mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would have
spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires.”
“But still this does not mean that the campaign is over,” said Prince Andrew.
“Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they daren’t say so. It
will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, it won’t be your skirmishing at
Dürrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will decide the matter, but those who
devised it,” said Bilíbin quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on
his forehead, and pausing. “The only question is what will come of the meeting
between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia
joins the Allies, Austria’s hand will be forced and there will be war. If not it is
merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of the new Campo Formio
are to be drawn up.”
“What an extraordinary genius!” Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, “and what luck the man
has!”
“Buonaparte?” said Bilíbin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to indicate
that he was about to say something witty. “Buonaparte?” he repeated,
accentuating the u: “I think, however, now that he lays down laws for Austria at
Schönbrunn, il faut lui faire grâce de l’u! * I shall certainly adopt an innovation
and call him simply Bonaparte!”
* “We must let him off the u!”
“But joking apart,” said Prince Andrew, “do you really think the campaign is
over?”
“This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is not used to
it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the first place because her
provinces have been pillaged—they say the Holy Russian army loots terribly—
her army is destroyed, her capital taken, and all this for the beaux yeux * of His
Sardinian Majesty. And therefore—this is between ourselves—I instinctively
feel that we are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France
and projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately.”
* Fine eyes.
“But the best of it was,” said one, telling of the misfortune of a fellow
diplomat, “that the Chancellor told him flatly that his appointment to London
was a promotion and that he was so to regard it. Can you fancy the figure he
cut?...”
“But the worst of it, gentlemen—I am giving Kurágin away to you—is that
that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking advantage of it!”
Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over its arm. He
began to laugh.
“Tell me about that!” he said.
“Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!” cried several voices.
“You, Bolkónski, don’t know,” said Bilíbin turning to Prince Andrew, “that all
the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the Russian army) are nothing
compared to what this man has been doing among the women!”
“La femme est la compagne de l’homme,” * announced Prince Hippolyte, and
began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.
* “Woman is man’s companion.”
Bilíbin and the rest of “ours” burst out laughing in Hippolyte’s face, and
Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom—he had to admit—he had almost
been jealous on his wife’s account, was the butt of this set.
“Oh, I must give you a treat,” Bilíbin whispered to Bolkónski. “Kurágin is
exquisite when he discusses politics—you should see his gravity!”
He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began talking to
him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered round these two.
“The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance,” began Hippolyte
gazing round with importance at the others, “without expressing... as in its last
note... you understand... Besides, unless His Majesty the Emperor derogates
from the principle of our alliance...
“Wait, I have not finished...” he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him by the
arm, “I believe that intervention will be stronger than nonintervention. And...” he
paused. “Finally one cannot impute the nonreceipt of our dispatch of November
18. That is how it will end.” And he released Bolkónski’s arm to indicate that he
had now quite finished.
“Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
mouth!” said Bilíbin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with satisfaction.
Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was evidently
distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain the wild laughter that
convulsed his usually impassive features.
“Well now, gentlemen,” said Bilíbin, “Bolkónski is my guest in this house and
in Brünn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I can, with all the pleasures of
life here. If we were in Vienna it would be easy, but here, in this wretched
Moravian hole, it is more difficult, and I beg you all to help me. Brünn’s
attractions must be shown him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you,
Hippolyte, of course the women.”
“We must let him see Amelie, she’s exquisite!” said one of “ours,” kissing his
finger tips.
“In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane interests,”
said Bilíbin.
“I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality, gentlemen, it is
already time for me to go,” replied Prince Andrew looking at his watch.
“Where to?”
“To the Emperor.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
“Well, au revoir, Bolkónski! Au revoir, Prince! Come back early to dinner,”
cried several voices. “We’ll take you in hand.”
“When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the way that
provisions are supplied and the routes indicated,” said Bilíbin, accompanying
him to the hall.
“I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I know the facts, I can’t,”
replied Bolkónski, smiling.
“Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for giving
audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can’t do it, as you will see.”
CHAPTER XII
At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he had been
told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into his face and just
nodded to him with his long head. But after it was over, the adjutant he had seen
the previous day ceremoniously informed Bolkónski that the Emperor desired to
give him an audience. The Emperor Francis received him standing in the middle
of the room. Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was struck by the
fact that the Emperor seemed confused and blushed as if not knowing what to
say.
“Tell me, when did the battle begin?” he asked hurriedly.
Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple: “Was
Kutúzov well? When had he left Krems?” and so on. The Emperor spoke as if
his sole aim were to put a given number of questions—the answers to these
questions, as was only too evident, did not interest him.
“At what o’clock did the battle begin?” asked the Emperor.
“I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o’clock the battle began at the front,
but at Dürrenstein, where I was, our attack began after five in the afternoon,”
replied Bolkónski growing more animated and expecting that he would have a
chance to give a reliable account, which he had ready in his mind, of all he knew
and had seen. But the Emperor smiled and interrupted him.
“How many miles?”
“From where to where, Your Majesty?”
“From Dürrenstein to Krems.”
“Three and a half miles, Your Majesty.”
“The French have abandoned the left bank?”
“According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during the night.”
“Is there sufficient forage in Krems?”
“Forage has not been supplied to the extent...”
The Emperor interrupted him.
“At what o’clock was General Schmidt killed?”
“At seven o’clock, I believe.”
“At seven o’clock? It’s very sad, very sad!”
The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew withdrew
and was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides. Everywhere he saw
friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday’s adjutant reproached him for
not having stayed at the palace, and offered him his own house. The Minister of
War came up and congratulated him on the Maria Theresa Order of the third
grade, which the Emperor was conferring on him. The Empress’ chamberlain
invited him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see him. He did
not know whom to answer, and for a few seconds collected his thoughts. Then
the Russian ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the window, and
began to talk to him.
Contrary to Bilíbin’s forecast the news he had brought was joyfully received.
A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutúzov was awarded the Grand Cross of
Maria Theresa, and the whole army received rewards. Bolkónski was invited
everywhere, and had to spend the whole morning calling on the principal
Austrian dignitaries. Between four and five in the afternoon, having made all his
calls, he was returning to Bilíbin’s house thinking out a letter to his father about
the battle and his visit to Brünn. At the door he found a vehicle half full of
luggage. Franz, Bilíbin’s man, was dragging a portmanteau with some difficulty
out of the front door.
Before returning to Bilíbin’s Prince Andrew had gone to a bookshop to
provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent some time in
the shop.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Oh, your excellency!” said Franz, with difficulty rolling the portmanteau into
the vehicle, “we are to move on still farther. The scoundrel is again at our heels!”
“Eh? What?” asked Prince Andrew.
Bilíbin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed excitement.
“There now! Confess that this is delightful,” said he. “This affair of the
Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without striking a blow!”
Prince Andrew could not understand.
“But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the town
knows?”
“I come from the archduchess’. I heard nothing there.”
“And you didn’t see that everybody is packing up?”
“I did not... What is it all about?” inquired Prince Andrew impatiently.
“What’s it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that Auersperg
was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat is now rushing along
the road to Brünn and will be here in a day or two.”
“What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was mined?”
“That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why.”
Bolkónski shrugged his shoulders.
“But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It will be cut
off,” said he.
“That’s just it,” answered Bilíbin. “Listen! The French entered Vienna as I
told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, those gentlemen, messieurs
les maréchaux, * Murat, Lannes, and Belliard, mount and ride to the bridge.
(Observe that all three are Gascons.) ‘Gentlemen,’ says one of them, ‘you know
the Thabor Bridge is mined and doubly mined and that there are menacing
fortifications at its head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to
blow up the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign the
Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and take it!’ ‘Yes,
let’s!’ say the others. And off they go and take the bridge, cross it, and now with
their whole army are on this side of the Danube, marching on us, you, and your
lines of communication.”
* The marshalls.
“Stop jesting,” said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news grieved
him and yet he was pleased.
As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless situation it
occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead it out of this position;
that here was the Toulon that would lift him from the ranks of obscure officers
and offer him the first step to fame! Listening to Bilíbin he was already
imagining how on reaching the army he would give an opinion at the war
council which would be the only one that could save the army, and how he alone
would be entrusted with the executing of the plan.
“Stop this jesting,” he said.
“I am not jesting,” Bilíbin went on. “Nothing is truer or sadder. These
gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white handkerchiefs; they assure
the officer on duty that they, the marshals, are on their way to negotiate with
Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the tête-de-pont. * They spin him a
thousand gasconades, saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is
arranging a meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg,
and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace the
officers, crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets to
the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary material into the water, and
approaches the tête-de-pont. At length appears the lieutenant general, our dear
Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself. ‘Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian
army, hero of the Turkish wars! Hostilities are ended, we can shake one
another’s hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince
Auersperg’s acquaintance.’ In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so
bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly established
intimacy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the sight of Murat’s
mantle and ostrich plumes, qu’il n’y voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu’il devait
faire faire sur l’ennemi!” *(2) In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilíbin did
not forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due appreciation. “The
French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the bridge is
taken! But what is best of all,” he went on, his excitement subsiding under the
delightful interest of his own story, “is that the sergeant in charge of the cannon
which was to give the signal to fire the mines and blow up the bridge, this
sergeant, seeing that the French troops were running onto the bridge, was about
to fire, but Lannes stayed his hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than
his general, goes up to Auersperg and says: ‘Prince, you are being deceived, here
are the French!’ Murat, seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed to speak,
turns to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true Gascon) and says: ‘I
don’t recognize the world-famous Austrian discipline, if you allow a subordinate
to address you like that!’ It was a stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his
dignity at stake and orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that
this affair of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
rascality....”
* Bridgehead.
* (2) That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that
he ought to be firing at the enemy.
“It may be treachery,” said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the gray
overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of firing, and the glory
that awaited him.
“Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light,” replied Bilíbin. “It’s
not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as at Ulm... it is...”—he seemed
to be trying to find the right expression. “C’est... c’est du Mack. Nous sommes
mackés (It is... it is a bit of Mack. We are Macked),” he concluded, feeling that
he had produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a slight
smile he began to examine his nails.
“Where are you off to?” he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had risen and
was going toward his room.
“I am going away.”
“Where to?”
“To the army.”
“But you meant to stay another two days?”
“But now I am off at once.”
And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went to his
room.
“Do you know, mon cher,” said Bilíbin following him, “I have been thinking
about you. Why are you going?”
And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles vanished
from his face.
Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.
“Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back to the army
now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, it is heroism!”
“Not at all,” said Prince Andrew.
“But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the other side of the
question and you will see that your duty, on the contrary, is to take care of
yourself. Leave it to those who are no longer fit for anything else.... You have
not been ordered to return and have not been dismissed from here; therefore, you
can stay and go with us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to
Olmütz, and Olmütz is a very decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in
my calèche.”
“Do stop joking, Bilíbin,” cried Bolkónski.
“I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are you going,
when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two things,” and the skin
over his left temple puckered, “either you will not reach your regiment before
peace is concluded, or you will share defeat and disgrace with Kutúzov’s whole
army.”
And Bilíbin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was insoluble.
“I cannot argue about it,” replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he thought: “I am
going to save the army.”
“My dear fellow, you are a hero!” said Bilíbin.
CHAPTER XIII
That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkónski set off
to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would find it and fearing to be
captured by the French on the way to Krems.
In Brünn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy
baggage was already being dispatched to Olmütz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince
Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was moving with
great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so obstructed with carts
that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a
Cossack from a Cossack commander, and hungry and weary, making his way
past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his
own luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him as he
went along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed
these rumors.
“Cette armée russe que l’or de l’Angleterre a transportée des extrémités de
l’univers, nous allons lui faire éprouver le même sort—(le sort de l’armée
d’Ulm).” * He remembered these words in Bonaparte’s address to his army at
the beginning of the campaign, and they awoke in him astonishment at the
genius of his hero, a feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. “And should
there be nothing left but to die?” he thought. “Well, if need be, I shall do it no
worse than others.”
* “That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of
the earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same
fate—(the fate of the army at Ulm).”
They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could already be seen.
Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the position.
“That’s our battery,” said the staff officer indicating the highest point. “It’s in
charge of the queer fellow we saw without his boots. You can see everything
from there; let’s go there, Prince.”
“Thank you very much, I will go on alone,” said Prince Andrew, wishing to
rid himself of this staff officer’s company, “please don’t trouble yourself
further.”
The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.
The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly and
cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had been in the
baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road seven miles away
from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and alarm could be felt, but
the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French lines the more confident was the
appearance of our troops. The soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in lines,
the sergeants major and company officers were counting the men, poking the last
man in each section in the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers
scattered over the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and were
building shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the fires sat others,
dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg bands or mending boots or
overcoats and crowding round the boilers and porridge cookers. In one company
dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly at the steaming boiler,
waiting till the sample, which a quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden
bowl to an officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had been tasted.
Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka, crowded
round a pockmarked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who, tilting a keg, filled
one after another the canteen lids held out to him. The soldiers lifted the canteen
lids to their lips with reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their
mouths, and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,
licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats. All their
faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home awaiting peaceful
encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before an action in which at
least half of them would be left on the field. After passing a chasseur regiment
and in the lines of the Kiev grenadiers—fine fellows busy with similar peaceful
affairs—near the shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different
from the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of grenadiers
before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while two others were
flourishing their switches and striking him regularly on his bare back. The man
shrieked unnaturally. A stout major was pacing up and down the line, and
regardless of the screams kept repeating:
“It’s a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest, honorable, and
brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor in him, he’s a scoundrel. Go
on! Go on!”
So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but unnatural screams,
continued.
“Go on, go on!” said the major.
A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his face stepped
away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the adjutant as he rode by.
Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our front line and
that of the enemy were far apart on the right and left flanks, but in the center
where the men with a flag of truce had passed that morning, the lines were so
near together that the men could see one another’s faces and speak to one
another. Besides the soldiers who formed the picket line on either side, there
were many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their strange
foreign enemies.
Since early morning—despite an injunction not to approach the picket line—
the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away. The soldiers forming the
picket line, like showmen exhibiting a curiosity, no longer looked at the French
but paid attention to the sight-seers and grew weary waiting to be relieved.
Prince Andrew halted to have a look at the French.
“Look! Look there!” one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a Russian
musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer and was rapidly
and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. “Hark to him jabbering! Fine, isn’t
it? It’s all the Frenchy can do to keep up with him. There now, Sídorov!”
“Wait a bit and listen. It’s fine!” answered Sídorov, who was considered an
adept at French.
The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dólokhov. Prince Andrew
recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying. Dólokhov had come
from the left flank where their regiment was stationed, with his captain.
“Now then, go on, go on!” incited the officer, bending forward and trying not
to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible to him. “More, please:
more! What’s he saying?”
Dólokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot dispute
with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about the campaign. The
Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the Russians, was trying to prove that
the Russians had surrendered and had fled all the way from Ulm, while
Dólokhov maintained that the Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the
French.
“We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you off,” said
Dólokhov.
“Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!” said the French
grenadier.
The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
“We’ll make you dance as we did under Suvórov...,” * said Dólokhov.
* “On vous fera danser.”
“It’s ancient history,” said another, guessing that it referred to a former war.
“The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the others...”
“Bonaparte...” began Dólokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
“Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacré nom...!” cried he angrily.
“The devil skin your Emperor.”
And Dólokhov swore at him in coarse soldier’s Russian and shouldering his
musket walked away.
“Let us go, Iván Lukích,” he said to the captain.
“Ah, that’s the way to talk French,” said the picket soldiers. “Now, Sídorov,
you have a try!”
Sídorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless
sounds very fast: “Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaská,” he said, trying to give
an expressive intonation to his voice.
“Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!” came peals of such healthy and
good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the French
involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed to be to unload the
muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return home as quickly as possible.
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
confronted one another as before.
CHAPTER XVI
Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left, Prince Andrew
made his way up to the battery from which the staff officer had told him the
whole field could be seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest
of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an artillery sentry was pacing up
and down; he stood at attention when the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed
his measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and still
farther back picket ropes and artillerymen’s bonfires. To the left, not far from the
farthest cannon, was a small, newly constructed wattle shed from which came
the sound of officers’ voices in eager conversation.
It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the greater
part of the enemy’s opened out from this battery. Just facing it, on the crest of the
opposite hill, the village of Schön Grabern could be seen, and in three places to
left and right the French troops amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater
part of whom were evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left
from that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but it
was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye. Our right flank was posted
on a rather steep incline which dominated the French position. Our infantry were
stationed there, and at the farthest point the dragoons. In the center, where
Túshin’s battery stood and from which Prince Andrew was surveying the
position, was the easiest and most direct descent and ascent to the brook
separating us from Schön Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse,
in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood. The French
line was wider than ours, and it was plain that they could easily outflank us on
both sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it difficult for
artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew took out his notebook and, leaning
on the cannon, sketched a plan of the position. He made some notes on two
points, intending to mention them to Bagratión. His idea was, first, to
concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly, to withdraw the cavalry
to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrew, being always near the commander in
chief, closely following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly
studying historical accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the
course of events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only
important possibilities: “If the enemy attacks the right flank,” he said to himself,
“the Kiev grenadiers and the Podólsk chasseurs must hold their position till
reserves from the center come up. In that case the dragoons could successfully
make a flank counterattack. If they attack our center we, having the center
battery on this high ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and
retreat to the dip by echelons.” So he reasoned.... All the time he had been beside
the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly, but as often happens
had not understood a word of what they were saying. Suddenly, however, he was
struck by a voice coming from the shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could
not but listen.
“No, friend,” said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, a familiar
voice, “what I say is that if it were possible to know what is beyond death, none
of us would be afraid of it. That’s so, friend.”
Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: “Afraid or not, you can’t escape it
anyhow.”
“All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people,” said a third manly voice
interrupting them both. “Of course you artillery men are very wise, because you
can take everything along with you—vodka and snacks.”
And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer, laughed.
“Yes, one is afraid,” continued the first speaker, he of the familiar voice. “One
is afraid of the unknown, that’s what it is. Whatever we may say about the soul
going to the sky... we know there is no sky but only an atmosphere.”
The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
“Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Túshin,” it said.
“Why,” thought Prince Andrew, “that’s the captain who stood up in the
sutler’s hut without his boots.” He recognized the agreeable, philosophizing
voice with pleasure.
“Some herb vodka? Certainly!” said Túshin. “But still, to conceive a future
life...”
He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air; nearer and nearer,
faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon ball, as if it had not finished saying
what was necessary, thudded into the ground near the shed with super human
force, throwing up a mass of earth. The ground seemed to groan at the terrible
impact.
And immediately Túshin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth and his
kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed followed by the owner of
the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer who hurried off to his company,
buttoning up his coat as he ran.
CHAPTER XVII
Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery, looking at
the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes ran rapidly over the wide
space, but he only saw that the hitherto motionless masses of the French now
swayed and that there really was a battery to their left. The smoke above it had
not yet dispersed. Two mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping
up the hill. A small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the
hill, probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had not yet
dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a report. The battle had
begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and galloped back to Grunth to find
Prince Bagratión. He heard the cannonade behind him growing louder and more
frequent. Evidently our guns had begun to reply. From the bottom of the slope,
where the parleys had taken place, came the report of musketry.
Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte’s stern letter, and Murat,
humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at once moved his forces to
attack the center and outflank both the Russian wings, hoping before evening
and before the arrival of the Emperor to crush the contemptible detachment that
stood before him.
“It has begun. Here it is!” thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood rush to his
heart. “But where and how will my Toulon present itself?”
Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and drinking
vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same rapid movement
of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets ready, and on all their faces
he recognized the same eagerness that filled his heart. “It has begun! Here it is,
dreadful but enjoyable!” was what the face of each soldier and each officer
seemed to say.
Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up, he saw, in
the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming toward him. The
foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding a white horse,
was Prince Bagratión. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for him to come up;
Prince Bagratión reined in his horse and recognizing Prince Andrew nodded to
him. He still looked ahead while Prince Andrew told him what he had seen.
The feeling, “It has begun! Here it is!” was seen even on Prince Bagratión’s
hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes. Prince Andrew gazed
with anxious curiosity at that impassive face and wished he could tell what, if
anything, this man was thinking and feeling at that moment. “Is there anything at
all behind that impassive face?” Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked.
Prince Bagratión bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew
told him, and said, “Very good!” in a tone that seemed to imply that everything
that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he had foreseen.
Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride, spoke quickly. Prince
Bagratión, uttering his words with an Oriental accent, spoke particularly slowly,
as if to impress the fact that there was no need to hurry. However, he put his
horse to a trot in the direction of Túshin’s battery. Prince Andrew followed with
the suite. Behind Prince Bagratión rode an officer of the suite, the prince’s
personal adjutant, Zherkóv, an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty, riding a
fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian—an accountant who had asked permission to
be present at the battle out of curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man,
looked around him with a naïve smile of satisfaction and presented a strange
appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he
jolted on his horse with a convoy officer’s saddle.
“He wants to see a battle,” said Zherkóv to Bolkónski, pointing to the
accountant, “but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach already.”
“Oh, leave off!” said the accountant with a beaming but rather cunning smile,
as if flattered at being made the subject of Zherkóv’s joke, and purposely trying
to appear stupider than he really was.
“It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince,” said the staff officer. (He
remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a prince,
but could not get it quite right.)
By this time they were all approaching Túshin’s battery, and a ball struck the
ground in front of them.
“What’s that that has fallen?” asked the accountant with a naïve smile.
“A French pancake,” answered Zherkóv.
“So that’s what they hit with?” asked the accountant. “How awful!”
He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking when
they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which suddenly ended with a
thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack, riding a little to their right and
behind the accountant, crashed to earth with his horse. Zherkóv and the staff
officer bent over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant
stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive curiosity. The
Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled.
Prince Bagratión screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing the cause of
the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to say, “Is it worth while
noticing trifles?” He reined in his horse with the care of a skillful rider and,
slightly bending over, disengaged his saber which had caught in his cloak. It was
an old-fashioned saber of a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew
remembered the story of Suvórov giving his saber to Bagratión in Italy, and the
recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had reached the
battery at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined the battlefield.
“Whose company?” asked Prince Bagratión of an artilleryman standing by the
ammunition wagon.
He asked, “Whose company?” but he really meant, “Are you frightened
here?” and the artilleryman understood him.
“Captain Túshin’s, your excellency!” shouted the red-haired, freckled gunner
in a merry voice, standing to attention.
“Yes, yes,” muttered Bagratión as if considering something, and he rode past
the limbers to the farthest cannon.
As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his suite,
and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see the gunners
who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its former position. A huge,
broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang
to the wheel; while Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the
cannon’s mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Túshin, stumbling over
the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked
out shading his eyes with his small hand.
“Lift it two lines more and it will be just right,” cried he in a feeble voice to
which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill-suited to his weak figure. “Number
Two!” he squeaked. “Fire, Medvédev!”
Bagratión called to him, and Túshin, raising three fingers to his cap with a
bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military salute but like a priest’s
benediction, approached the general. Though Túshin’s guns had been intended to
cannonade the valley, he was firing incendiary balls at the village of Schön
Grabern visible just opposite, in front of which large masses of French were
advancing.
No one had given Túshin orders where and at what to fire, but after consulting
his sergeant major, Zakharchénko, for whom he had great respect, he had
decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to the village. “Very good!” said
Bagratión in reply to the officer’s report, and began deliberately to examine the
whole battlefield extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on our
right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the hollow
where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and crackling of musketry was
heard, and much farther to the right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite
pointed out to Bagratión a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the
horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagratión ordered two battalions
from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank. The officer of the suite
ventured to remark to the prince that if these battalions went away, the guns
would remain without support. Prince Bagratión turned to the officer and with
his dull eyes looked at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the
officer’s remark was just and that really no answer could be made to it. But at
that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the commander of the
regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses of the French were
coming down upon them and that his regiment was in disorder and was
retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince Bagratión bowed his head in sign of
assent and approval. He rode off at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to the
dragoons with orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour
later with the news that the commander of the dragoons had already retreated
beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been opened on him and he
was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened to throw some sharpshooters into
the wood.
“Very good!” said Bagratión.
As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also, and as it was
too far to the left flank for him to have time to go there himself, Prince Bagratión
sent Zherkóv to tell the general in command (the one who had paraded his
regiment before Kutúzov at Braunau) that he must retreat as quickly as possible
behind the hollow in the rear, as the right flank would probably not be able to
withstand the enemy’s attack very long. About Túshin and the battalion that had
been in support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened
attentively to Bagratión’s colloquies with the commanding officers and the
orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders were really given,
but that Prince Bagratión tried to make it appear that everything done by
necessity, by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if
not by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions. Prince Andrew
noticed, however, that though what happened was due to chance and was
independent of the commander’s will, owing to the tact Bagratión showed, his
presence was very valuable. Officers who approached him with disturbed
countenances became calm; soldiers and officers greeted him gaily, grew more
cheerful in his presence, and were evidently anxious to display their courage
before him.
CHAPTER XVIII
Prince Bagratión, having reached the highest point of our right flank, began
riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard but where on account of
the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to the hollow the less they
could see but the more they felt the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began
to meet wounded men. One with a bleeding head and no cap was being dragged
along by two soldiers who supported him under the arms. There was a gurgle in
his throat and he was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat
or mouth. Another was walking sturdily by himself but without his musket,
groaning aloud and swinging his arm which had just been hurt, while blood from
it was streaming over his greatcoat as from a bottle. He had that moment been
wounded and his face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing a road they
descended a steep incline and saw several men lying on the ground; they also
met a crowd of soldiers some of whom were unwounded. The soldiers were
ascending the hill breathing heavily, and despite the general’s presence were
talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them rows of gray cloaks were
already visible through the smoke, and an officer catching sight of Bagratión
rushed shouting after the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them back.
Bagratión rode up to the ranks along which shots crackled now here and now
there, drowning the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air
reeked with smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with it.
Some were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the touchpans or
taking charges from their pouches, while others were firing, though who they
were firing at could not be seen for the smoke which there was no wind to carry
away. A pleasant humming and whistling of bullets were often heard. “What is
this?” thought Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of soldiers. “It can’t be an
attack, for they are not moving; it can’t be a square—for they are not drawn up
for that.”
The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
pleasant smile—his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes, giving
him a mild expression, rode up to Bagratión and welcomed him as a host
welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had been attacked by
French cavalry and that, though the attack had been repulsed, he had lost more
than half his men. He said the attack had been repulsed, employing this military
term to describe what had occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not
himself know what had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to
him, and could not say with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or his
regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at the commencement of the
action balls and shells began flying all over his regiment and hitting men and
that afterwards someone had shouted “Cavalry!” and our men had begun firing.
They were still firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at French
infantry who had come into the hollow and were firing at our men. Prince
Bagratión bowed his head as a sign that this was exactly what he had desired and
expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to bring down the two
battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom they had just passed. Prince Andrew was
struck by the changed expression on Prince Bagratión’s face at this moment. It
expressed the concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a man
who on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water. The dull,
sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of profound thought.
The round, steady, hawk’s eyes looked before him eagerly and rather
disdainfully, not resting on anything although his movements were still slow and
measured.
The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagratión, entreating him to
go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were. “Please, your
excellency, for God’s sake!” he kept saying, glancing for support at an officer of
the suite who turned away from him. “There, you see!” and he drew attention to
the bullets whistling, singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in
the tone of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who has
picked up an ax: “We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister your hands.” He
spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and his half-closed eyes gave still
more persuasiveness to his words. The staff officer joined in the colonel’s
appeals, but Bagratión did not reply; he only gave an order to cease firing and re-
form, so as to give room for the two approaching battalions. While he was
speaking, the curtain of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising
wind, began to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible hand, and the
hill opposite, with the French moving about on it, opened out before them. All
eyes fastened involuntarily on this French column advancing against them and
winding down over the uneven ground. One could already see the soldiers’
shaggy caps, distinguish the officers from the men, and see the standard flapping
against its staff.
“They march splendidly,” remarked someone in Bagratión’s suite.
The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The clash
would take place on this side of it...
The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly formed up and
moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the laggards, came two battalions
of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had reached Bagratión, the
weighty tread of the mass of men marching in step could be heard. On their left
flank, nearest to Bagratión, marched a company commander, a fine round-faced
man, with a stupid and happy expression—the same man who had rushed out of
the wattle shed. At that moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how
dashing a fellow he would appear as he passed the commander.
With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly with his
muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to his full height without the
smallest effort, his ease contrasting with the heavy tread of the soldiers who
were keeping step with him. He carried close to his leg a narrow unsheathed
sword (small, curved, and not like a real weapon) and looked now at the superior
officers and now back at the men without losing step, his whole powerful body
turning flexibly. It was as if all the powers of his soul were concentrated on
passing the commander in the best possible manner, and feeling that he was
doing it well he was happy. “Left... left... left...” he seemed to repeat to himself
at each alternate step; and in time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of
soldiers burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in step, and each one of
these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating to himself at each alternate
step, “Left... left... left...” A fat major skirted a bush, puffing and falling out of
step; a soldier who had fallen behind, his face showing alarm at his defection,
ran at a trot, panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the
air, flew over the heads of Bagratión and his suite, and fell into the column to the
measure of “Left... left!” “Close up!” came the company commander’s voice in
jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a semicircle round something where the ball
had fallen, and an old trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had
stopped beside the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a
hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous silence and the regular tramp
of feet beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear left... left... left.
“Well done, lads!” said Prince Bagratión.
“Glad to do our best, your ex’len-lency!” came a confused shout from the
ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on Bagratión as he
shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: “We know that ourselves!”
Another, without looking round, as though fearing to relax, shouted with his
mouth wide open and passed on.
The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
Bagratión rode round the ranks that had marched past him and dismounted.
He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over his felt coat, stretched
his legs, and set his cap straight. The head of the French column, with its officers
leading, appeared from below the hill.
“Forward, with God!” said Bagratión, in a resolute, sonorous voice, turning
for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging his arms, he went forward
uneasily over the rough field with the awkward gait of a cavalryman. Prince
Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading him forward, and experienced
great happiness.
The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside Bagratión,
could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets, and even their faces. (He
distinctly saw an old French officer who, with gaitered legs and turned-out toes,
climbed the hill with difficulty.) Prince Bagratión gave no further orders and
silently continued to walk on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after
another rang out from the French, smoke appeared all along their uneven ranks,
and musket shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among them the round-faced
officer who had marched so gaily and complacently. But at the moment the first
report was heard, Bagratión looked round and shouted, “Hurrah!”
“Hurrah—ah!—ah!” rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and passing
Bagratión and racing one another they rushed in an irregular but joyous and
eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.
CHAPTER XIX
The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right flank. In the
center Túshin’s forgotten battery, which had managed to set fire to the Schön
Grabern village, delayed the French advance. The French were putting out the
fire which the wind was spreading, and thus gave us time to retreat. The
retirement of the center to the other side of the dip in the ground at the rear was
hurried and noisy, but the different companies did not get mixed. But our left—
which consisted of the Azóv and Podólsk infantry and the Pávlograd hussars—
was simultaneously attacked and outflanked by superior French forces under
Lannes and was thrown into confusion. Bagratión had sent Zherkóv to the
general commanding that left flank with orders to retreat immediately.
Zherkóv, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse about and
galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagratión than his courage failed him. He
was seized by panic and could not go where it was dangerous.
Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where the firing
was, he began to look for the general and his staff where they could not possibly
be, and so did not deliver the order.
The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander of the
regiment Kutúzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which Dólokhov was serving
as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had been assigned to the
commander of the Pávlograd regiment in which Rostóv was serving, and a
misunderstanding arose. The two commanders were much exasperated with one
another and, long after the action had begun on the right flank and the French
were already advancing, were engaged in discussion with the sole object of
offending one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were by no
means ready for the impending action. From privates to general they were not
expecting a battle and were engaged in peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding
the horses and the infantry collecting wood.
“He higher iss dan I in rank,” said the German colonel of the hussars, flushing
and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, “so let him do what he vill, but I
cannot sacrifice my hussars... Bugler, sount ze retreat!”
But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling together,
thundered on the right and in the center, while the capotes of Lannes’
sharpshooters were already seen crossing the milldam and forming up within
twice the range of a musket shot. The general in command of the infantry went
toward his horse with jerky steps, and having mounted drew himself up very
straight and tall and rode to the Pávlograd commander. The commanders met
with polite bows but with secret malevolence in their hearts.
“Once again, Colonel,” said the general, “I can’t leave half my men in the
wood. I beg of you, I beg of you,” he repeated, “to occupy the position and
prepare for an attack.”
“I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!” suddenly
replied the irate colonel. “If you vere in the cavalry...”
“I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if you are not
aware of the fact...”
“Quite avare, your excellency,” suddenly shouted the colonel, touching his
horse and turning purple in the face. “Vill you be so goot to come to ze front and
see dat zis position iss no goot? I don’t vish to destroy my men for your
pleasure!”
“You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own pleasure and I
won’t allow it to be said!”
Taking the colonel’s outburst as a challenge to his courage, the general
expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front line, as if their
differences would be settled there amongst the bullets. They reached the front,
several bullets sped over them, and they halted in silence. There was nothing
fresh to be seen from the line, for from where they had been before it had been
evident that it was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken
ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The general and
colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another like two fighting cocks
preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs of cowardice in the other.
Both passed the examination successfully. As there was nothing to be said, and
neither wished to give occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to
leave the range of fire, they would have remained there for a long time testing
each other’s courage had it not been that just then they heard the rattle of
musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them in the wood. The French had
attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It was no longer possible for the
hussars to retreat with the infantry. They were cut off from the line of retreat on
the left by the French. However inconvenient the position, it was now necessary
to attack in order to cut a way through for themselves.
The squadron in which Rostóv was serving had scarcely time to mount before
it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns bridge, there was nothing
between the squadron and the enemy, and again that terrible dividing line of
uncertainty and fear—resembling the line separating the living from the dead—
lay between them. All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question
whether they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them
all.
The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to questions put to him
by the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on having his own way,
gave an order. No one said anything definite, but the rumor of an attack spread
through the squadron. The command to form up rang out and the sabers whizzed
as they were drawn from their scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the
left flank, infantry and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not himself
know what to do, and this irresolution communicated itself to the men.
“If only they would be quick!” thought Rostóv, feeling that at last the time had
come to experience the joy of an attack of which he had so often heard from his
fellow hussars.
“Fo’ward, with God, lads!” rang out Denísov’s voice. “At a twot fo’ward!”
The horses’ croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at the reins
and started of his own accord.
Before him, on the right, Rostóv saw the front lines of his hussars and still
farther ahead a dark line which he could not see distinctly but took to be the
enemy. Shots could be heard, but some way off.
“Faster!” came the word of command, and Rostóv felt Rook’s flanks drooping
as he broke into a gallop.
Rostóv anticipated his horse’s movements and became more and more elated.
He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had been in the middle of
the line that had seemed so terrible—and now he had crossed that line and not
only was there nothing terrible, but everything was becoming more and more
happy and animated. “Oh, how I will slash at him!” thought Rostóv, gripping the
hilt of his saber.
“Hur-a-a-a-ah!” came a roar of voices. “Let anyone come my way now,”
thought Rostóv driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a full gallop so
that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was already visible. Suddenly
something like a birch broom seemed to sweep over the squadron. Rostóv raised
his saber, ready to strike, but at that instant the trooper Nikítenko, who was
galloping ahead, shot away from him, and Rostóv felt as in a dream that he
continued to be carried forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same
spot. From behind him Bondarchúk, an hussar he knew, jolted against him and
looked angrily at him. Bondarchúk’s horse swerved and galloped past.
“How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!” Rostóv asked and
answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle of a field. Instead of
the moving horses and hussars’ backs, he saw nothing before him but the
motionless earth and the stubble around him. There was warm blood under his
arm. “No, I am wounded and the horse is killed.” Rook tried to rise on his
forelegs but fell back, pinning his rider’s leg. Blood was flowing from his head;
he struggled but could not rise. Rostóv also tried to rise but fell back, his
sabretache having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men were, and
where the French, he did not know. There was no one near.
Having disentangled his leg, he rose. “Where, on which side, was now the line
that had so sharply divided the two armies?” he asked himself and could not
answer. “Can something bad have happened to me?” he wondered as he got up:
and at that moment he felt that something superfluous was hanging on his
benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if it were not his. He examined his hand
carefully, vainly trying to find blood on it. “Ah, here are people coming,” he
thought joyfully, seeing some men running toward him. “They will help me!” In
front came a man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned,
and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running behind.
One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among the hindmost of
these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar. He was being held by
the arms and his horse was being led behind him.
“It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will take me too?
Who are these men?” thought Rostóv, scarcely believing his eyes. “Can they be
French?” He looked at the approaching Frenchmen, and though but a moment
before he had been galloping to get at them and hack them to pieces, their
proximity now seemed so awful that he could not believe his eyes. “Who are
they? Why are they running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me?
Me whom everyone is so fond of?” He remembered his mother’s love for him,
and his family’s, and his friends’, and the enemy’s intention to kill him seemed
impossible. “But perhaps they may do it!” For more than ten seconds he stood
not moving from the spot or realizing the situation. The foremost Frenchman, the
one with the hooked nose, was already so close that the expression of his face
could be seen. And the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging
down, holding his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostóv. He seized
his pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran with all his
might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the feeling of doubt and
conflict with which he had trodden the Enns bridge, but with the feeling of a
hare fleeing from the hounds. One single sentiment, that of fear for his young
and happy life, possessed his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled
across the field with the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then
turning his good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder of terror went
through him: “No, better not look,” he thought, but having reached the bushes he
glanced round once more. The French had fallen behind, and just as he looked
round the first man changed his run to a walk and, turning, shouted something
loudly to a comrade farther back. Rostóv paused. “No, there’s some mistake,”
thought he. “They can’t have wanted to kill me.” But at the same time, his left
arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He could run no
more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostóv closed his eyes and
stooped down. One bullet and then another whistled past him. He mustered his
last remaining strength, took hold of his left hand with his right, and reached the
bushes. Behind these were some Russian sharpshooters.
CHAPTER XX
The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the outskirts of the
wood ran out of it, the different companies getting mixed, and retreated as a
disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his fear, uttered the senseless cry, “Cut off!”
that is so terrible in battle, and that word infected the whole crowd with a feeling
of panic.
“Surrounded! Cut off? We’re lost!” shouted the fugitives.
The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the general realized
that something dreadful had happened to his regiment, and the thought that he,
an exemplary officer of many years’ service who had never been to blame, might
be held responsible at headquarters for negligence or inefficiency so staggered
him that, forgetting the recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general,
and above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for self-preservation, he
clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring his horse, galloped to the
regiment under a hail of bullets which fell around, but fortunately missed him.
His one desire was to know what was happening and at any cost correct, or
remedy, the mistake if he had made one, so that he, an exemplary officer of
twenty-two years’ service, who had never been censured, should not be held to
blame.
Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind the
copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and descending
the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides the fate of battles had
arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of soldiers attend to the voice of their
commander, or would they, disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his
desperate shouts that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his furious
purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former self, and the
flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all continued to run, talking, firing into the
air, and disobeying orders. The moral hesitation which decided the fate of battles
was evidently culminating in a panic.
The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the powder
smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at that moment the
French who were attacking, suddenly and without any apparent reason, ran back
and disappeared from the outskirts, and Russian sharpshooters showed
themselves in the copse. It was Timókhin’s company, which alone had
maintained its order in the wood and, having lain in ambush in a ditch, now
attacked the French unexpectedly. Timókhin, armed only with a sword, had
rushed at the enemy with such a desperate cry and such mad, drunken
determination that, taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets
and run. Dólokhov, running beside Timókhin, killed a Frenchman at close
quarters and was the first to seize the surrendering French officer by his collar.
Our fugitives returned, the battalions re-formed, and the French who had nearly
cut our left flank in half were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were
able to join up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and
Major Ekonómov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies
pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the commander’s stirrup,
almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a bluish coat of broadcloth, he
had no knapsack or cap, his head was bandaged, and over his shoulder a French
munition pouch was slung. He had an officer’s sword in his hand. The soldier
was pale, his blue eyes looked impudently into the commander’s face, and his
lips were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving instructions to
Major Ekonómov, he could not help taking notice of the soldier.
“Your excellency, here are two trophies,” said Dólokhov, pointing to the
French sword and pouch. “I have taken an officer prisoner. I stopped the
company.” Dólokhov breathed heavily from weariness and spoke in abrupt
sentences. “The whole company can bear witness. I beg you will remember this,
your excellency!”
“All right, all right,” replied the commander, and turned to Major Ekonómov.
But Dólokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around his head,
pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.
“A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your excellency!”
Túshin’s battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of the action did
Prince Bagratión, still hearing the cannonade in the center, send his orderly staff
officer, and later Prince Andrew also, to order the battery to retire as quickly as
possible. When the supports attached to Túshin’s battery had been moved away
in the middle of the action by someone’s order, the battery had continued firing
and was only not captured by the French because the enemy could not surmise
that anyone could have the effrontery to continue firing from four quite
undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action of that battery led the
French to suppose that here—in the center—the main Russian forces were
concentrated. Twice they had attempted to attack this point, but on each occasion
had been driven back by grapeshot from the four isolated guns on the hillock.
Soon after Prince Bagratión had left him, Túshin had succeeded in setting fire
to Schön Grabern.
“Look at them scurrying! It’s burning! Just see the smoke! Fine! Grand! Look
at the smoke, the smoke!” exclaimed the artillerymen, brightening up.
All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the direction of
the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the soldiers cried at each shot:
“Fine! That’s good! Look at it... Grand!” The fire, fanned by the breeze, was
rapidly spreading. The French columns that had advanced beyond the village
went back; but as though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns
to the right of the village and began firing them at Túshin’s battery.
In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in successfully
cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed this battery when two
balls, and then four more, fell among our guns, one knocking over two horses
and another tearing off a munition-wagon driver’s leg. Their spirits once roused
were, however, not diminished, but only changed character. The horses were
replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were carried away,
and the four guns were turned against the ten-gun battery. Túshin’s companion
officer had been killed at the beginning of the engagement and within an hour
seventeen of the forty men of the guns’ crews had been disabled, but the
artillerymen were still as merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the French
appearing below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.
Little Túshin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly to “refill
my pipe for that one!” and then, scattering sparks from it, ran forward shading
his eyes with his small hand to look at the French.
“Smack at ‘em, lads!” he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels and
working the screws himself.
Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always made him
jump, Túshin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun, now
aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing dead or
wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in his feeble voice, so
high pitched and irresolute. His face grew more and more animated. Only when
a man was killed or wounded did he frown and turn away from the sight,
shouting angrily at the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the
injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and, as is
always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders taller and twice as
broad as their officer—all looked at their commander like children in an
embarrassing situation, and the expression on his face was invariably reflected
on theirs.
Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and activity,
Túshin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense of fear, and the thought
that he might be killed or badly wounded never occurred to him. On the contrary,
he became more and more elated. It seemed to him that it was a very long time
ago, almost a day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and
that the corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar ground.
Though he thought of everything, considered everything, and did everything the
best of officers could do in his position, he was in a state akin to feverish
delirium or drunkenness.
From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle and thud
of the enemy’s cannon balls, from the flushed and perspiring faces of the crew
bustling round the guns, from the sight of the blood of men and horses, from the
little puffs of smoke on the enemy’s side (always followed by a ball flying past
and striking the earth, a man, a gun, a horse), from the sight of all these things a
fantastic world of his own had taken possession of his brain and at that moment
afforded him pleasure. The enemy’s guns were in his fancy not guns but pipes
from which occasional puffs were blown by an invisible smoker.
“There... he’s puffing again,” muttered Túshin to himself, as a small cloud
rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left by the wind.
“Now look out for the ball... we’ll throw it back.”
“What do you want, your honor?” asked an artilleryman, standing close by,
who heard him muttering.
“Nothing... only a shell...” he answered.
“Come along, our Matvévna!” he said to himself. “Matvévna” * was the name
his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which was large and of an old
pattern. The French swarming round their guns seemed to him like ants. In that
world, the handsome drunkard Number One of the second gun’s crew was
“uncle”; Túshin looked at him more often than at anyone else and took delight in
his every movement. The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now
diminishing, now increasing, seemed like someone’s breathing. He listened
intently to the ebb and flow of these sounds.
* Daughter of Matthew.
Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezúkhov’s large, newly
furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people said, of a wife who
was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.
CHAPTER III
Old Prince Nicholas Bolkónski received a letter from Prince Vasíli in
November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying him a visit. “I
am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I shall think nothing of an
extra seventy miles to come and see you at the same time, my honored
benefactor,” wrote Prince Vasíli. “My son Anatole is accompanying me on his
way to the army, so I hope you will allow him personally to express the deep
respect that, emulating his father, he feels for you.”
“It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors are coming to
us of their own accord,” incautiously remarked the little princess on hearing the
news.
Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.
A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasíli’s servants came one evening in
advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.
Old Bolkónski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasíli’s character, but
more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and Alexander Prince Vasíli had
risen to high position and honors. And now, from the hints contained in his letter
and given by the little princess, he saw which way the wind was blowing, and
his low opinion changed into a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted
whenever he mentioned him. On the day of Prince Vasíli’s arrival, Prince
Bolkónski was particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he was in a
bad temper because Prince Vasíli was coming, or whether his being in a bad
temper made him specially annoyed at Prince Vasíli’s visit, he was in a bad
temper, and in the morning Tíkhon had already advised the architect not to go to
the prince with his report.
“Do you hear how he’s walking?” said Tíkhon, drawing the architect’s
attention to the sound of the prince’s footsteps. “Stepping flat on his heels—we
know what that means....”
However, at nine o’clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable collar and
cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day before and the path to the
hothouse, along which the prince was in the habit of walking, had been swept:
the marks of the broom were still visible in the snow and a shovel had been left
sticking in one of the soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The
prince went through the conservatories, the serfs’ quarters, and the outbuildings,
frowning and silent.
“Can a sleigh pass?” he asked his overseer, a venerable man, resembling his
master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him back to the house.
“The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor.”
The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. “God be thanked,”
thought the overseer, “the storm has blown over!”
“It would have been hard to drive up, your honor,” he added. “I heard, your
honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor.”
The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him, frowning.
“What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?” he said in his shrill,
harsh voice. “The road is not swept for the princess my daughter, but for a
minister! For me, there are no ministers!”
“Your honor, I thought...”
“You thought!” shouted the prince, his words coming more and more rapidly
and indistinctly. “You thought!... Rascals! Blackguards!... I’ll teach you to
think!” and lifting his stick he swung it and would have hit Alpátych, the
overseer, had not the latter instinctively avoided the blow. “Thought...
Blackguards...” shouted the prince rapidly.
But although Alpátych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the stroke,
came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before him, or perhaps
for that very reason, the prince, though he continued to shout: “Blackguards!...
Throw the snow back on the road!” did not lift his stick again but hurried into
the house.
Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew that
the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle Bourienne
with a radiant face that said: “I know nothing, I am the same as usual,” and
Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast eyes. What she found hardest
to bear was to know that on such occasions she ought to behave like
Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not. She thought: “If I seem not to notice he
will think that I do not sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits
myself, he will say (as he has done before) that I’m in the dumps.”
The prince looked at his daughter’s frightened face and snorted.
“Fool... or dummy!” he muttered.
“And the other one is not here. They’ve been telling tales,” he thought—
referring to the little princess who was not in the dining room.
“Where is the princess?” he asked. “Hiding?”
“She is not very well,” answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a bright smile,
“so she won’t come down. It is natural in her state.”
“Hm! Hm!” muttered the prince, sitting down.
His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he flung it
away. Tíkhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little princess was not
unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the prince that, hearing he was in a
bad humor, she had decided not to appear.
“I am afraid for the baby,” she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne: “Heaven
knows what a fright might do.”
In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, and with a
sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not realize because the fear
was so much the stronger feeling. The prince reciprocated this antipathy, but it
was overpowered by his contempt for her. When the little princess had grown
accustomed to life at Bald Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle
Bourienne, spent whole days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often
talked with her about the old prince and criticized him.
“So we are to have visitors, mon prince?” remarked Mademoiselle Bourienne,
unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. “His Excellency Prince Vasíli
Kurágin and his son, I understand?” she said inquiringly.
“Hm!—his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the service,”
said the prince disdainfully. “Why his son is coming I don’t understand. Perhaps
Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don’t want him.” (He looked at his
blushing daughter.) “Are you unwell today? Eh? Afraid of the ‘minister’ as that
idiot Alpátych called him this morning?”
“No, mon père.”
Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice of a
subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the conservatories and the
beauty of a flower that had just opened, and after the soup the prince became
more genial.
After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess was sitting
at a small table, chattering with Másha, her maid. She grew pale on seeing her
father-in-law.
She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her cheeks had
sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.
“Yes, I feel a kind of oppression,” she said in reply to the prince’s question as
to how she felt.
“Do you want anything?”
“No, merci, mon père.”
“Well, all right, all right.”
He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpátych stood with
bowed head.
“Has the snow been shoveled back?”
“Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven’s sake... It was only my
stupidity.”
“All right, all right,” interrupted the prince, and laughing his unnatural way, he
stretched out his hand for Alpátych to kiss, and then proceeded to his study.
Prince Vasíli arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by coachmen and
footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to one of the lodges over
the road purposely laden with snow.
Prince Vasíli and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.
Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo before a table on
a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly fixed his large and
handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual round of amusement
which someone for some reason had to provide for him. And he looked on this
visit to a churlish old man and a rich and ugly heiress in the same way. All this
might, he thought, turn out very well and amusingly. “And why not marry her if
she really has so much money? That never does any harm,” thought Anatole.
He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had become
habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his father’s room with
the good-humored and victorious air natural to him. Prince Vasíli’s two valets
were busy dressing him, and he looked round with much animation and
cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter entered, as if to say: “Yes, that’s how I
want you to look.”
“I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?” Anatole asked, as if
continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been mentioned during
the journey.
“Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious with
the old prince.”
“If he starts a row I’ll go away,” said Prince Anatole. “I can’t bear those old
men! Eh?”
“Remember, for you everything depends on this.”
In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants’ rooms that the
minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of both had been minutely
described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room, vainly trying to master
her agitation.
“Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never happen!” she
said, looking at herself in the glass. “How shall I enter the drawing room? Even
if I like him I can’t now be myself with him.” The mere thought of her father’s
look filled her with terror. The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had
already received from Másha, the lady’s maid, the necessary report of how
handsome the minister’s son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and
with what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while the son had
followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received this
information, the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose chattering
voices had reached her from the corridor, went into Princess Mary’s room.
“You know they’ve come, Marie?” said the little princess, waddling in, and
sinking heavily into an armchair.
She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the morning, but
had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully done and her face was
animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded outlines.
Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still more noticeable how
much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch had been added to
Mademoiselle Bourienne’s toilet which rendered her fresh and pretty face yet
more attractive.
“What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?” she began.
“They’ll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing room and we shall
have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself up at all!”
The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and merrily began
to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary should be dressed. Princess
Mary’s self-esteem was wounded by the fact that the arrival of a suitor agitated
her, and still more so by both her companions’ not having the least conception
that it could be otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for
them would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to dress her
would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her beautiful eyes grew
dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took on the unattractive martyrlike
expression it so often wore, as she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne
and Lise. Both these women quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She
was so plain that neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they began
dressing her with perfect sincerity, and with the naïve and firm conviction
women have that dress can make a face pretty.
“No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty,” said Lise, looking sideways at
Princess Mary from a little distance. “You have a maroon dress, have it fetched.
Really! You know the fate of your whole life may be at stake. But this one is too
light, it’s not becoming!”
It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary that was
not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little princess felt this;
they still thought that if a blue ribbon were placed in the hair, the hair combed
up, and the blue scarf arranged lower on the best maroon dress, and so on, all
would be well. They forgot that the frightened face and the figure could not be
altered, and that however they might change the setting and adornment of that
face, it would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three changes to which
Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair had been arranged on the top of
her head (a style that quite altered and spoiled her looks) and she had put on a
maroon dress with a pale-blue scarf, the little princess walked twice round her,
now adjusting a fold of the dress with her little hand, now arranging the scarf
and looking at her with her head bent first on one side and then on the other.
“No, it will not do,” she said decidedly, clasping her hands. “No, Mary, really
this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little gray everyday dress. Now
please, do it for my sake. Katie,” she said to the maid, “bring the princess her
gray dress, and you’ll see, Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it,” she
added, smiling with a foretaste of artistic pleasure.
But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained sitting
motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in the mirror her eyes
full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to burst into sobs.
“Come, dear princess,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, “just one more little
effort.”
The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to Princess Mary.
“Well, now we’ll arrange something quite simple and becoming,” she said.
The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s, and Katie’s, who was
laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping of birds.
“No, leave me alone,” said Princess Mary.
Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds was
silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful eyes full of tears
and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at them, and understood that it
was useless and even cruel to insist.
“At least, change your coiffure,” said the little princess. “Didn’t I tell you,”
she went on, turning reproachfully to Mademoiselle Bourienne, “Mary’s is a face
which such a coiffure does not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change
it.”
“Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to me,”
answered a voice struggling with tears.
Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to themselves that
Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse than usual, but it was too
late. She was looking at them with an expression they both knew, an expression
thoughtful and sad. This expression in Princess Mary did not frighten them (she
never inspired fear in anyone), but they knew that when it appeared on her face,
she became mute and was not to be shaken in her determination.
“You will change it, won’t you?” said Lise. And as Princess Mary gave no
answer, she left the room.
Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise’s request, she not
only left her hair as it was, but did not even look in her glass. Letting her arms
fall helplessly, she sat with downcast eyes and pondered. A husband, a man, a
strong dominant and strangely attractive being rose in her imagination, and
carried her into a totally different happy world of his own. She fancied a child,
her own—such as she had seen the day before in the arms of her nurse’s
daughter—at her own breast, the husband standing by and gazing tenderly at her
and the child. “But no, it is impossible, I am too ugly,” she thought.
“Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment,” came the maid’s
voice at the door.
She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking, and before
going down she went into the room where the icons hung and, her eyes fixed on
the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a lamp, she stood before it with
folded hands for a few moments. A painful doubt filled her soul. Could the joy
of love, of earthly love for a man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage
Princess Mary dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest, most
deeply hidden longing was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this
feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. “O God,” she
said, “how am I to stifle in my heart these temptations of the devil? How am I to
renounce forever these vile fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill Thy will?” And
scarcely had she put that question than God gave her the answer in her own
heart. “Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or envious.
Man’s future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee, but live so that
thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God’s will to prove thee in the duties
of marriage, be ready to fulfill His will.” With this consoling thought (but yet
with a hope for the fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary
sighed, and having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and
coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What could all
that matter in comparison with the will of God, without Whose care not a hair of
man’s head can fall?
CHAPTER IV
When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasíli and his son were already in the
drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne. When
she entered with her heavy step, treading on her heels, the gentlemen and
Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little princess, indicating her to the
gentlemen, said: “Voilà Marie!” Princess Mary saw them all and saw them in
detail. She saw Prince Vasíli’s face, serious for an instant at the sight of her, but
immediately smiling again, and the little princess curiously noting the
impression “Marie” produced on the visitors. And she saw Mademoiselle
Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her unusually animated look
which was fixed on him, but him she could not see, she only saw something
large, brilliant, and handsome moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince
Vasíli approached first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her hand
and answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she remembered him
quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still could not see him. She only
felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and she touched with her lips a white
forehead, over which was beautiful light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When
she looked up at him she was struck by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right
thumb under a button of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in,
slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked with beaming
face at the princess without speaking and evidently not thinking about her at all.
Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready or eloquent in conversation, but he had
the faculty, so invaluable in society, of composure and imperturbable self-
possession. If a man lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first
introduction and betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and
an anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was dumb,
swung his foot, and smilingly examined the princess’ hair. It was evident that he
could be silent in this way for a very long time. “If anyone finds this silence
inconvenient, let him talk, but I don’t want to,” he seemed to say. Besides this, in
his behavior to women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in them
curiosity, awe, and even love—a supercilious consciousness of his own
superiority. It was as if he said to them: “I know you, I know you, but why
should I bother about you? You’d be only too glad, of course.” Perhaps he did
not really think this when he met women—even probably he did not, for in
general he thought very little—but his looks and manner gave that impression.
The princess felt this, and as if wishing to show him that she did not even dare
expect to interest him, she turned to his father. The conversation was general and
animated, thanks to Princess Lise’s voice and little downy lip that lifted over her
white teeth. She met Prince Vasíli with that playful manner often employed by
lively chatty people, and consisting in the assumption that between the person
they so address and themselves there are some semi-private, long-established
jokes and amusing reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist—
just as none existed in this case. Prince Vasíli readily adopted her tone and the
little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew, into these amusing
recollections of things that had never occurred. Mademoiselle Bourienne also
shared them and even Princess Mary felt herself pleasantly made to share in
these merry reminiscences.
“Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to ourselves, dear
prince,” said the little princess (of course, in French) to Prince Vasíli. “It’s not as
at Annette’s * receptions where you always ran away; you remember cette chère
Annette!”
* Anna Pávlovna.
The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and considering what
he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him. “What are Prince Vasíli
and that son of his to me? Prince Vasíli is a shallow braggart and his son, no
doubt, is a fine specimen,” he grumbled to himself. What angered him was that
the coming of these visitors revived in his mind an unsettled question he always
tried to stifle, one about which he always deceived himself. The question was
whether he could ever bring himself to part from his daughter and give her to a
husband. The prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing
beforehand that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only
with his feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Mary,
little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him. “And why should she
marry?” he thought. “To be unhappy for certain. There’s Lise, married to
Andrew—a better husband one would think could hardly be found nowadays—
but is she contented with her lot? And who would marry Marie for love? Plain
and awkward! They’ll take her for her connections and wealth. Are there no
women living unmarried, and even the happier for it?” So thought Prince
Bolkónski while dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off
demanded an immediate answer. Prince Vasíli had brought his son with the
evident intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask
for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad. “Well, I’ve nothing
against it,” the prince said to himself, “but he must be worthy of her. And that is
what we shall see.”
“That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!” he added aloud.
He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing rapidly round
the company. He noticed the change in the little princess’ dress, Mademoiselle
Bourienne’s ribbon, Princess Mary’s unbecoming coiffure, Mademoiselle
Bourienne’s and Anatole’s smiles, and the loneliness of his daughter amid the
general conversation. “Got herself up like a fool!” he thought, looking irritably
at her. “She is shameless, and he ignores her!”
He went straight up to Prince Vasíli.
“Well! How d’ye do? How d’ye do? Glad to see you!”
“Friendship laughs at distance,” began Prince Vasíli in his usual rapid, self-
confident, familiar tone. “Here is my second son; please love and befriend him.”
Prince Bolkónski surveyed Anatole.
“Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!” he said. “Well, come and kiss me,”
and he offered his cheek.
Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and perfect
composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his father had told him to
expect.
Prince Bolkónski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa and,
drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasíli, pointed to it and began questioning
him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen attentively to what
Prince Vasíli said, but kept glancing at Princess Mary.
“And so they are writing from Potsdam already?” he said, repeating Prince
Vasíli’s last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his daughter.
“Is it for visitors you’ve got yourself up like that, eh?” said he. “Fine, very
fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for the visitors, and before the
visitors I tell you that in future you are never to dare to change your way of dress
without my consent.”
“It was my fault, mon père,” interceded the little princess, with a blush.
“You must do as you please,” said Prince Bolkónski, bowing to his daughter-
in-law, “but she need not make a fool of herself, she’s plain enough as it is.”
And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who was
reduced to tears.
“On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,” said Prince Vasíli.
“Now you, young prince, what’s your name?” said Prince Bolkónski, turning
to Anatole, “come here, let us talk and get acquainted.”
“Now the fun begins,” thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile beside the
old prince.
“Well, my dear boy, I hear you’ve been educated abroad, not taught to read
and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me, my dear boy, are
you serving in the Horse Guards?” asked the old man, scrutinizing Anatole
closely and intently.
“No, I have been transferred to the line,” said Anatole, hardly able to restrain
his laughter.
“Ah! That’s a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the Tsar and the
country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve. Well, are you off to the
front?”
“No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am attached... what is it I
am attached to, Papa?” said Anatole, turning to his father with a laugh.
“A splendid soldier, splendid! ‘What am I attached to!’ Ha, ha, ha!” laughed
Prince Bolkónski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly Prince Bolkónski
frowned.
“You may go,” he said to Anatole.
Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
“And so you’ve had him educated abroad, Prince Vasíli, haven’t you?” said
the old prince to Prince Vasíli.
“I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education there is
much better than ours.”
“Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The lad’s a fine
fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now.” He took Prince Vasíli’s arm and
led him to his study. As soon as they were alone together, Prince Vasíli
announced his hopes and wishes to the old prince.
“Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can’t part from her?” said the old
prince angrily. “What an idea! I’m ready for it tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I
want to know my son-in-law better. You know my principles—everything
aboveboard! I will ask her tomorrow in your presence; if she is willing, then he
can stay on. He can stay and I’ll see.” The old prince snorted. “Let her marry, it’s
all the same to me!” he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting from
his son.
“I will tell you frankly,” said Prince Vasíli in the tone of a crafty man
convinced of the futility of being cunning with so keen-sighted a companion.
“You know, you see right through people. Anatole is no genius, but he is an
honest, goodhearted lad; an excellent son or kinsman.”
“All right, all right, we’ll see!”
As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time
without male society, on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of Prince
Bolkónski’s household felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers
of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately increased tenfold, and their
life, which seemed to have been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a
new brightness, full of significance.
Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The handsome
open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband absorbed all her
attention. He seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and magnanimous.
She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams of a future family life
continually rose in her imagination. She drove them away and tried to conceal
them.
“But am I not too cold with him?” thought the princess. “I try to be reserved
because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him already, but then he cannot
know what I think of him and may imagine that I do not like him.”
And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to her new
guest. “Poor girl, she’s devilish ugly!” thought Anatole.
Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole’s arrival,
thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young woman without any
definite position, without relations or even a country, did not intend to devote her
life to serving Prince Bolkónski, to reading aloud to him and being friends with
Princess Mary. Mademoiselle Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian
prince who, able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain, badly
dressed, ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in love with her and carry her
off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew a story,
heard from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she liked to repeat to
herself. It was the story of a girl who had been seduced, and to whom her poor
mother (sa pauvre mère) appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a man
without being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched to tears as in
imagination she told this story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian
prince, had appeared. He would carry her away and then sa pauvre mère would
appear and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself in Mademoiselle
Bourienne’s head at the very time she was talking to Anatole about Paris. It was
not calculation that guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what she
should do), but all this had long been familiar to her, and now that Anatole had
appeared it just grouped itself around him and she wished and tried to please him
as much as possible.
The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet, unconsciously
and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the familiar gallop of coquetry,
without any ulterior motive or any struggle, but with naïve and lighthearted
gaiety.
Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man tired of
being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the spectacle of his power
over these three women. Besides that, he was beginning to feel for the pretty and
provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne that passionate animal feeling which was
apt to master him with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and
most reckless actions.
After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess Mary was
asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits, came and
leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess
Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion. Her favorite sonata bore her
into a most intimately poetic world and the look she felt upon her made that
world still more poetic. But Anatole’s expression, though his eyes were fixed on
her, referred not to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne’s little
foot, which he was then touching with his own under the clavichord.
Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her lovely
eyes there was a look of fearful joy and hope that was also new to the princess.
“How she loves me!” thought Princess Mary. “How happy I am now, and how
happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband? Can it be
possible?” she thought, not daring to look at his face, but still feeling his eyes
gazing at her.
In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole kissed
Princess Mary’s hand. She did not know how she found the courage, but she
looked straight into his handsome face as it came near to her shortsighted eyes.
Turning from Princess Mary he went up and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s
hand. (This was not etiquette, but then he did everything so simply and with such
assurance!) Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened
look.
“What delicacy!” thought the princess. “Is it possible that Amélie”
(Mademoiselle Bourienne) “thinks I could be jealous of her, and not value her
pure affection and devotion to me?” She went up to her and kissed her warmly.
Anatole went up to kiss the little princess’ hand.
“No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving well I
will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!” she said. And smilingly raising a
finger at him, she left the room.
CHAPTER V
They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as he got into
bed, all kept awake a long time that night.
“Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind—yes, kind, that is
the chief thing,” thought Princess Mary; and fear, which she had seldom
experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round, it seemed to her that
someone was there standing behind the screen in the dark corner. And this
someone was he—the devil—and he was also this man with the white forehead,
black eyebrows, and red lips.
She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.
Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long
time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at someone, now
working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre mère
rebuking her for her fall.
The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly made. She
could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every position was awkward and
uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her now more than ever because
Anatole’s presence had vividly recalled to her the time when she was not like
that and when everything was light and gay. She sat in an armchair in her
dressing jacket and nightcap and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned
the heavy feather bed for the third time, muttering to herself.
“I told you it was all lumps and holes!” the little princess repeated. “I should
be glad enough to fall asleep, so it’s not my fault!” and her voice quivered like
that of a child about to cry.
The old prince did not sleep either. Tíkhon, half asleep, heard him pacing
angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though he had been insulted
through his daughter. The insult was the more pointed because it concerned not
himself but another, his daughter, whom he loved more than himself. He kept
telling himself that he would consider the whole matter and decide what was
right and how he should act, but instead of that he only excited himself more and
more.
“The first man that turns up—she forgets her father and everything else, runs
upstairs and does up her hair and wags her tail and is unlike herself! Glad to
throw her father over! And she knew I should notice it. Fr... fr... fr! And don’t I
see that that idiot had eyes only for Bourienne—I shall have to get rid of her.
And how is it she has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride for herself
she might at least have some for my sake! She must be shown that the blockhead
thinks nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but I’ll
let her see....”
The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a mistake and
that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess Mary’s self-
esteem would be wounded and his point (not to be parted from her) would be
gained, so pacifying himself with this thought, he called Tíkhon and began to
undress.
“What devil brought them here?” thought he, while Tíkhon was putting the
nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. “I never invited
them. They came to disturb my life—and there is not much of it left.”
“Devil take ‘em!” he muttered, while his head was still covered by the shirt.
Tíkhon knew his master’s habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and therefore
met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive expression of the face that
emerged from the shirt.
“Gone to bed?” asked the prince.
Tíkhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his master’s
thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince Vasíli and his son.
“They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency.”
“No good... no good...” said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his feet into his
slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing gown, he went to the couch
on which he slept.
Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle Bourienne,
they quite understood one another as to the first part of their romance, up to the
appearance of the pauvre mère; they understood that they had much to say to one
another in private and so they had been seeking an opportunity since morning to
meet one another alone. When Princess Mary went to her father’s room at the
usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and Anatole met in the conservatory.
Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special trepidation. It seemed
to her that not only did everybody know that her fate would be decided that day,
but that they also knew what she thought about it. She read this in Tíkhon’s face
and in that of Prince Vasíli’s valet, who made her a low bow when she met him
in the corridor carrying hot water.
The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of his
daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking expression of
her father’s. His face wore that expression when his dry hands clenched with
vexation at her not understanding a sum in arithmetic, when rising from his chair
he would walk away from her, repeating in a low voice the same words several
times over.
He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.
“I have had a proposition made me concerning you,” he said with an unnatural
smile. “I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasíli has not come and brought
his pupil with him” (for some reason Prince Bolkónski referred to Anatole as a
“pupil”) “for the sake of my beautiful eyes. Last night a proposition was made
me on your account and, as you know my principles, I refer it to you.”
“How am I to understand you, mon père?” said the princess, growing pale and
then blushing.
“How understand me!” cried her father angrily. “Prince Vasíli finds you to his
taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to you on his pupil’s behalf.
That’s how it’s to be understood! ‘How understand it’!... And I ask you!”
“I do not know what you think, Father,” whispered the princess.
“I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I’m not going to get
married. What about you? That’s what I want to know.”
The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with disapproval, but at
that moment the thought occurred to her that her fate would be decided now or
never. She lowered her eyes so as not to see the gaze under which she felt that
she could not think, but would only be able to submit from habit, and she said: “I
wish only to do your will, but if I had to express my own desire...” She had no
time to finish. The old prince interrupted her.
“That’s admirable!” he shouted. “He will take you with your dowry and take
Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She’ll be the wife, while you...”
The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on his
daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.
“Now then, now then, I’m only joking!” he said. “Remember this, Princess, I
hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to choose. I give you freedom.
Only remember that your life’s happiness depends on your decision. Never mind
me!”
“But I do not know, Father!”
“There’s no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry you or
anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room, think it over, and come
back in an hour and tell me in his presence: yes or no. I know you will pray over
it. Well, pray if you like, but you had better think it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or
no, yes or no!” he still shouted when the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already
staggered out of the study.
Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had said about
Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be sure, but still it was
terrible, and she could not help thinking of it. She was going straight on through
the conservatory, neither seeing nor hearing anything, when suddenly the well-
known whispering of Mademoiselle Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes,
and two steps away saw Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering
something to her. With a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole
looked at Princess Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the waist of
Mademoiselle Bourienne who had not yet seen her.
“Who’s that? Why? Wait a moment!” Anatole’s face seemed to say. Princess
Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand it. At last
Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole bowed to
Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in a laugh at this strange
incident, and then shrugging his shoulders went to the door that led to his own
apartments.
An hour later, Tíkhon came to call Princess Mary to the old prince; he added
that Prince Vasíli was also there. When Tíkhon came to her Princess Mary was
sitting on the sofa in her room, holding the weeping Mademoiselle Bourienne in
her arms and gently stroking her hair. The princess’ beautiful eyes with all their
former calm radiance were looking with tender affection and pity at
Mademoiselle Bourienne’s pretty face.
“No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!” said Mademoiselle
Bourienne.
“Why? I love you more than ever,” said Princess Mary, “and I will try to do all
I can for your happiness.”
“But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand being so
carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother...”
“I quite understand,” answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile. “Calm
yourself, my dear. I will go to my father,” she said, and went out.
Prince Vasíli, with one leg thrown high over the other and a snuffbox in his
hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion on his face, as if stirred to
his heart’s core and himself regretting and laughing at his own sensibility, when
Princess Mary entered. He hurriedly took a pinch of snuff.
“Ah, my dear, my dear!” he began, rising and taking her by both hands. Then,
sighing, he added: “My son’s fate is in your hands. Decide, my dear, good,
gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a daughter!”
He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.
“Fr... fr...” snorted Prince Bolkónski. “The prince is making a proposition to
you in his pupil’s—I mean, his son’s—name. Do you wish or not to be Prince
Anatole Kurágin’s wife? Reply: yes or no,” he shouted, “and then I shall reserve
the right to state my opinion also. Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion,” added
Prince Bolkónski, turning to Prince Vasíli and answering his imploring look.
“Yes, or no?”
“My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my life from yours.
I don’t wish to marry,” she answered positively, glancing at Prince Vasíli and at
her father with her beautiful eyes.
“Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!” cried Prince Bolkónski,
frowning and taking his daughter’s hand; he did not kiss her, but only bending
his forehead to hers just touched it, and pressed her hand so that she winced and
uttered a cry.
Prince Vasíli rose.
“My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never forget. But,
my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching this heart, so kind and
generous? Say ‘perhaps’... The future is so long. Say ‘perhaps.’”
“Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you for the honor,
but I shall never be your son’s wife.”
“Well, so that’s finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have seen you.
Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!” said the old prince. “Very,
very glad to have seen you,” repeated he, embracing Prince Vasíli.
“My vocation is a different one,” thought Princess Mary. “My vocation is to
be happy with another kind of happiness, the happiness of love and self-
sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will arrange poor Amélie’s happiness, she
loves him so passionately, and so passionately repents. I will do all I can to
arrange the match between them. If he is not rich I will give her the means; I will
ask my father and Andrew. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so
unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how passionately she must
love him if she could so far forget herself! Perhaps I might have done the
same!...” thought Princess Mary.
CHAPTER VI
It was long since the Rostóvs had news of Nicholas. Not till midwinter was
the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son’s handwriting. On receiving
it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm and haste, trying to escape notice, closed
the door, and began to read the letter.
Anna Mikháylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the house, on
hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the room and found the count
with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing at the same time.
Anna Mikháylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still living
with the Rostóvs.
“My dear friend?” said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, prepared to
sympathize in any way.
The count sobbed yet more.
“Nikólenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling boy... the
countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How tell the little countess!”
Anna Mikháylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief wiped
the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried her own eyes she
comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and till teatime she would
prepare the countess, and after tea, with God’s help, would inform her.
At dinner Anna Mikháylovna talked the whole time about the war news and
about Nikólenka, twice asked when the last letter had been received from him,
though she knew that already, and remarked that they might very likely be
getting a letter from him that day. Each time that these hints began to make the
countess anxious and she glanced uneasily at the count and at Anna
Mikháylovna, the latter very adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant
matters. Natásha, who, of the whole family, was the most gifted with a capacity
to feel any shades of intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her ears from
the beginning of the meal and was certain that there was some secret between
her father and Anna Mikháylovna, that it had something to do with her brother,
and that Anna Mikháylovna was preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natásha,
who knew how sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikólenka, did
not venture to ask any questions at dinner, but she was too excited to eat
anything and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless of her governess’
remarks. After dinner, she rushed headlong after Anna Mikháylovna and,
dashing at her, flung herself on her neck as soon as she overtook her in the
sitting room.
“Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!”
“Nothing, my dear.”
“No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won’t give up—I know you know
something.”
Anna Mikháylovna shook her head.
“You are a little slyboots,” she said.
“A letter from Nikólenka! I’m sure of it!” exclaimed Natásha, reading
confirmation in Anna Mikháylovna’s face.
“But for God’s sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your mamma.”
“I will, I will, only tell me! You won’t? Then I will go and tell at once.”
Anna Mikháylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the letter, on
condition that she should tell no one.
“No, on my true word of honor,” said Natásha, crossing herself, “I won’t tell
anyone!” and she ran off at once to Sónya.
“Nikólenka... wounded... a letter,” she announced in gleeful triumph.
“Nicholas!” was all Sónya said, instantly turning white.
Natásha, seeing the impression the news of her brother’s wound produced on
Sónya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.
She rushed to Sónya, hugged her, and began to cry.
“A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he wrote
himself,” said she through her tears.
“There now! It’s true that all you women are crybabies,” remarked Pétya,
pacing the room with large, resolute strides. “Now I’m very glad, very glad
indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself so. You are all blubberers and
understand nothing.”
Natásha smiled through her tears.
“You haven’t read the letter?” asked Sónya.
“No, but she said that it was all over and that he’s now an officer.”
“Thank God!” said Sónya, crossing herself. “But perhaps she deceived you.
Let us go to Mamma.”
Pétya paced the room in silence for a time.
“If I’d been in Nikólenka’s place I would have killed even more of those
Frenchmen,” he said. “What nasty brutes they are! I’d have killed so many that
there’d have been a heap of them.”
“Hold your tongue, Pétya, what a goose you are!”
“I’m not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles,” said Pétya.
“Do you remember him?” Natásha suddenly asked, after a moment’s silence.
Sónya smiled.
“Do I remember Nicholas?”
“No, Sónya, but do you remember so that you remember him perfectly,
remember everything?” said Natásha, with an expressive gesture, evidently
wishing to give her words a very definite meaning. “I remember Nikólenka too, I
remember him well,” she said. “But I don’t remember Borís. I don’t remember
him a bit.”
“What! You don’t remember Borís?” asked Sónya in surprise.
“It’s not that I don’t remember—I know what he is like, but not as I remember
Nikólenka. Him—I just shut my eyes and remember, but Borís... No!” (She shut
her eyes.) “No! there’s nothing at all.”
“Oh, Natásha!” said Sónya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her friend as
if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to say and as if she
were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was out of the question, “I am
in love with your brother once for all and, whatever may happen to him or to me,
shall never cease to love him as long as I live.”
Natásha looked at Sónya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and said
nothing. She felt that Sónya was speaking the truth, that there was such love as
Sónya was speaking of. But Natásha had not yet felt anything like it. She
believed it could be, but did not understand it.
“Shall you write to him?” she asked.
Sónya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas, and
whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already an officer
and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of herself and, as it might
seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on himself?
“I don’t know. I think if he writes, I will write too,” she said, blushing.
“And you won’t feel ashamed to write to him?”
Sónya smiled.
“No.”
“And I should be ashamed to write to Borís. I’m not going to.”
“Why should you be ashamed?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s awkward and would make me ashamed.”
“And I know why she’d be ashamed,” said Pétya, offended by Natásha’s
previous remark. “It’s because she was in love with that fat one in spectacles”
(that was how Pétya described his namesake, the new Count Bezúkhov) “and
now she’s in love with that singer” (he meant Natásha’s Italian singing master),
“that’s why she’s ashamed!”
“Pétya, you’re a stupid!” said Natásha.
“Not more stupid than you, madam,” said the nine-year-old Pétya, with the air
of an old brigadier.
The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikháylovna’s hints at dinner. On
retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her eyes fixed on a miniature
portrait of her son on the lid of a snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her
eyes. Anna Mikháylovna, with the letter, came on tiptoe to the countess’ door
and paused.
“Don’t come in,” she said to the old count who was following her. “Come
later.” And she went in, closing the door behind her.
The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna Mikháylovna’s
voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence, then both voices together
with glad intonations, and then footsteps. Anna Mikháylovna opened the door.
Her face wore the proud expression of a surgeon who has just performed a
difficult operation and admits the public to appreciate his skill.
“It is done!” she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the countess, who
sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait and in the other the letter,
and pressing them alternately to her lips.
When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, embraced his bald
head, over which she again looked at the letter and the portrait, and in order to
press them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away the bald head. Véra,
Natásha, Sónya, and Pétya now entered the room, and the reading of the letter
began. After a brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he
had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his father’s and
mother’s hands asking for their blessing, and that he kissed Véra, Natásha, and
Pétya. Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss,
and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him “dear Sónya, whom he loved
and thought of just the same as ever.” When she heard this Sónya blushed so that
tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran away
into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her dress puffed out like
a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped down on the floor. The countess
was crying.
“Why are you crying, Mamma?” asked Véra. “From all he says one should be
glad and not cry.”
This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natásha looked at her
reproachfully. “And who is it she takes after?” thought the countess.
Nicholas’ letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she did not let it out
of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses, and Dmítri, and several
acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter each time with fresh pleasure
and each time discovered in it fresh proofs of Nikólenka’s virtues. How strange,
how extraordinary, how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible
motion of whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son
about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that son who
had first learned to say “pear” and then “granny,” that this son should now be
away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a manly warrior doing some
kind of man’s work of his own, without help or guidance. The universal
experience of ages, showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle
to manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son’s growth toward manhood, at
each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never
existed the millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty
years before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who lived somewhere
under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she
could not believe that that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this
model son and officer that, judging by this letter, he now was.
“What a style! How charmingly he describes!” said she, reading the
descriptive part of the letter. “And what a soul! Not a word about himself.... Not
a word! About some Denísov or other, though he himself, I dare say, is braver
than any of them. He says nothing about his sufferings. What a heart! How like
him it is! And how he has remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I
always said when he was only so high—I always said....”
For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of letters to
Nicholas from all the household were written and copied out, while under the
supervision of the countess and the solicitude of the count, money and all things
necessary for the uniform and equipment of the newly commissioned officer
were collected. Anna Mikháylovna, practical woman that she was, had even
managed by favor with army authorities to secure advantageous means of
communication for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her
letters to the Grand Duke Constantine Pávlovich, who commanded the Guards.
The Rostóvs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite a definite
address, and that if a letter reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards
there was no reason why it should not reach the Pávlograd regiment, which was
presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood. And so it was decided to
send the letters and money by the Grand Duke’s courier to Borís and Borís was
to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess,
Pétya, Véra, Natásha, and Sónya, and finally there were six thousand rubles for
his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his son.
CHAPTER VII
On the twelfth of November, Kutúzov’s active army, in camp before Olmütz,
was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors—the Russian and
the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent the night ten miles
from Olmütz and next morning were to come straight to the review, reaching the
field at Olmütz by ten o’clock.
That day Nicholas Rostóv received a letter from Borís, telling him that the
Ismáylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles from Olmütz and that
he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money for him. Rostóv was
particularly in need of money now that the troops, after their active service, were
stationed near Olmütz and the camp swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and
Austrian Jews offering all sorts of tempting wares. The Pávlograds held feast
after feast, celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made
expeditions to Olmütz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who had
recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses. Rostóv, who had just
celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought Denísov’s horse, Bedouin,
was in debt all round, to his comrades and the sutlers. On receiving Borís’ letter
he rode with a fellow officer to Olmütz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and
then set off alone to the Guards’ camp to find his old playmate. Rostóv had not
yet had time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with
a soldier’s cross, equally shabby cadet’s riding breeches lined with worn leather,
and an officer’s saber with a sword knot. The Don horse he was riding was one
he had bought from a Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled
hussar cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode up to the camp
he thought how he would impress Borís and all his comrades of the Guards by
his appearance—that of a fighting hussar who had been under fire.
The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip, parading
their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy stages, their knapsacks
conveyed on carts, and the Austrian authorities had provided excellent dinners
for the officers at every halting place. The regiments had entered and left the
town with their bands playing, and by the Grand Duke’s orders the men had
marched all the way in step (a practice on which the Guards prided themselves),
the officers on foot and at their proper posts. Borís had been quartered, and had
marched all the way, with Berg who was already in command of a company.
Berg, who had obtained his captaincy during the campaign, had gained the
confidence of his superiors by his promptitude and accuracy and had arranged
his money matters very satisfactorily. Borís, during the campaign, had made the
acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by a letter of
recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become acquainted with Prince
Andrew Bolkónski, through whom he hoped to obtain a post on the commander
in chief’s staff. Berg and Borís, having rested after yesterday’s march, were
sitting, clean and neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to
them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. Borís, in the
accurate way characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of chessmen
with his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg’s move, and watched his
opponent’s face, evidently thinking about the game as he always thought only of
whatever he was engaged on.
“Well, how are you going to get out of that?” he remarked.
“We’ll try to,” replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing his hand.
At that moment the door opened.
“Here he is at last!” shouted Rostóv. “And Berg too! Oh, you petisenfans,
allay cushay dormir!” he exclaimed, imitating his Russian nurse’s French, at
which he and Borís used to laugh long ago.
“Dear me, how you have changed!”
Borís rose to meet Rostóv, but in doing so did not omit to steady and replace
some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace his friend, but
Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of youth, that dread of beaten
tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner different from that of its elders
which is often insincere, Nicholas wished to do something special on meeting
his friend. He wanted to pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss him—a thing
everybody did. But notwithstanding this, Borís embraced him in a quiet, friendly
way and kissed him three times.
They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when young men
take their first steps on life’s road, each saw immense changes in the other, quite
a new reflection of the society in which they had taken those first steps. Both had
changed greatly since they last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes
that had taken place in them.
“Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you’d been to a fete, not like
us sinners of the line,” cried Rostóv, with martial swagger and with baritone
notes in his voice, new to Borís, pointing to his own mud-bespattered breeches.
The German landlady, hearing Rostóv’s loud voice, popped her head in at the
door.
“Eh, is she pretty?” he asked with a wink.
“Why do you shout so? You’ll frighten them!” said Borís. “I did not expect
you today,” he added. “I only sent you the note yesterday by Bolkónski—an
adjutant of Kutúzov’s, who’s a friend of mine. I did not think he would get it to
you so quickly.... Well, how are you? Been under fire already?” asked Borís.
Without answering, Rostóv shook the soldier’s Cross of St. George fastened to
the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm, glanced at Berg with
a smile.
“As you see,” he said.
“Indeed? Yes, yes!” said Borís, with a smile. “And we too have had a splendid
march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode with our regiment
all the time, so that we had every comfort and every advantage. What receptions
we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I can’t tell you. And the Tsarévich
was very gracious to all our officers.”
And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of his hussar
revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the pleasures and advantages of
service under members of the Imperial family.
“Oh, you Guards!” said Rostóv. “I say, send for some wine.”
Borís made a grimace.
“If you really want it,” said he.
He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and sent for
wine.
“Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you,” he added.
Rostóv took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both arms on
the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he glanced angrily at Berg,
then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind the letter.
“Well, they’ve sent you a tidy sum,” said Berg, eying the heavy purse that
sank into the sofa. “As for us, Count, we get along on our pay. I can tell you for
myself...”
“I say, Berg, my dear fellow,” said Rostóv, “when you get a letter from home
and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk everything over with,
and I happen to be there, I’ll go at once, to be out of your way! Do go
somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!” he exclaimed, and immediately seizing
him by the shoulder and looking amiably into his face, evidently wishing to
soften the rudeness of his words, he added, “Don’t be hurt, my dear fellow; you
know I speak from my heart as to an old acquaintance.”
“Oh, don’t mention it, Count! I quite understand,” said Berg, getting up and
speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.
“Go across to our hosts: they invited you,” added Borís.
Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of dust, stood before
a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples upwards, in the way affected
by the Emperor Alexander, and, having assured himself from the way Rostóv
looked at it that his coat had been noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.
“Oh dear, what a beast I am!” muttered Rostóv, as he read the letter.
“Why?”
“Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them such a
fright! Oh, what a pig I am!” he repeated, flushing suddenly. “Well, have you
sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let’s have some!”
In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of recommendation to
Bagratión which the old countess at Anna Mikháylovna’s advice had obtained
through an acquaintance and sent to her son, asking him to take it to its
destination and make use of it.
“What nonsense! Much I need it!” said Rostóv, throwing the letter under the
table.
“Why have you thrown that away?” asked Borís.
“It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want it for!”
“Why ‘What the devil’?” said Borís, picking it up and reading the address.
“This letter would be of great use to you.”
“I want nothing, and I won’t be anyone’s adjutant.”
“Why not?” inquired Borís.
“It’s a lackey’s job!”
“You are still the same dreamer, I see,” remarked Borís, shaking his head.
“And you’re still the same diplomatist! But that’s not the point... Come, how
are you?” asked Rostóv.
“Well, as you see. So far everything’s all right, but I confess I should much
like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front.”
“Why?”
“Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try to make as
successful a career of it as possible.”
“Oh, that’s it!” said Rostóv, evidently thinking of something else.
He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend’s eyes, evidently trying in
vain to find the answer to some question.
Old Gabriel brought in the wine.
“Shouldn’t we now send for Berg?” asked Borís. “He would drink with you. I
can’t.”
“Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?” asked
Rostóv, with a contemptuous smile.
“He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow,” answered Borís.
Again Rostóv looked intently into Borís’ eyes and sighed. Berg returned, and
over the bottle of wine conversation between the three officers became animated.
The Guardsmen told Rostóv of their march and how they had been made much
of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They spoke of the sayings and doings of their
commander, the Grand Duke, and told stories of his kindness and irascibility.
Berg, as usual, kept silent when the subject did not relate to himself, but in
connection with the stories of the Grand Duke’s quick temper he related with
gusto how in Galicia he had managed to deal with the Grand Duke when the
latter made a tour of the regiments and was annoyed at the irregularity of a
movement. With a pleasant smile Berg related how the Grand Duke had ridden
up to him in a violent passion, shouting: “Arnauts!” (“Arnauts” was the
Tsarévich’s favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for the
company commander.
“Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I knew I was
right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know the Army Orders by
heart and know the Regulations as well as I do the Lord’s Prayer. So, Count,
there never is any negligence in my company, and so my conscience was at ease.
I came forward....” (Berg stood up and showed how he presented himself, with
his hand to his cap, and really it would have been difficult for a face to express
greater respect and self-complacency than his did.) “Well, he stormed at me, as
the saying is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It was not a matter of life but
rather of death, as the saying is. ‘Albanians!’ and ‘devils!’ and ‘To Siberia!’”
said Berg with a sagacious smile. “I knew I was in the right so I kept silent; was
not that best, Count?... ‘Hey, are you dumb?’ he shouted. Still I remained silent.
And what do you think, Count? The next day it was not even mentioned in the
Orders of the Day. That’s what keeping one’s head means. That’s the way,
Count,” said Berg, lighting his pipe and emitting rings of smoke.
“Yes, that was fine,” said Rostóv, smiling.
But Borís noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and skillfully
changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and where he got his wound.
This pleased Rostóv and he began talking about it, and as he went on became
more and more animated. He told them of his Schön Grabern affair, just as those
who have taken part in a battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would
like it to have been, as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds
well, but not at all as it really was. Rostóv was a truthful young man and would
on no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story meaning to tell
everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, involuntarily, and inevitably he
lapsed into falsehood. If he had told the truth to his hearers—who like himself
had often heard stories of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an
attack was and were expecting to hear just such a story—they would either not
have believed him or, still worse, would have thought that Rostóv was himself to
blame since what generally happens to the narrators of cavalry attacks had not
happened to him. He could not tell them simply that everyone went at a trot and
that he fell off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could
from a Frenchman into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as it really
happened, it would have been necessary to make an effort of will to tell only
what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young people are rarely
capable of it. His hearers expected a story of how beside himself and all aflame
with excitement, he had flown like a storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed
right and left, how his saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so
on. And so he told them all that.
In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: “You cannot imagine what a
strange frenzy one experiences during an attack,” Prince Andrew, whom Borís
was expecting, entered the room. Prince Andrew, who liked to help young men,
was flattered by being asked for his assistance and being well disposed toward
Borís, who had managed to please him the day before, he wished to do what the
young man wanted. Having been sent with papers from Kutúzov to the
Tsarévich, he looked in on Borís, hoping to find him alone. When he came in
and saw an hussar of the line recounting his military exploits (Prince Andrew
could not endure that sort of man), he gave Borís a pleasant smile, frowned as
with half-closed eyes he looked at Rostóv, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat
down languidly on the sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad
company. Rostóv flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a mere
stranger. Glancing, however, at Borís, he saw that he too seemed ashamed of the
hussar of the line.
In spite of Prince Andrew’s disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of the
contempt with which Rostóv, from his fighting army point of view, regarded all
these little adjutants on the staff of whom the newcomer was evidently one,
Rostóv felt confused, blushed, and became silent. Borís inquired what news
there might be on the staff, and what, without indiscretion, one might ask about
our plans.
“We shall probably advance,” replied Bolkónski, evidently reluctant to say
more in the presence of a stranger.
Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as was
rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies would be
doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that he could give no
opinion on such an important government order, and Berg laughed gaily.
“As to your business,” Prince Andrew continued, addressing Borís, “we will
talk of it later” (and he looked round at Rostóv). “Come to me after the review
and we will do what is possible.”
And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to Rostóv, whose
state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now changing to anger he did not
condescend to notice, and said: “I think you were talking of the Schön Grabern
affair? Were you there?”
“I was there,” said Rostóv angrily, as if intending to insult the aide-de-camp.
Bolkónski noticed the hussar’s state of mind, and it amused him. With a
slightly contemptuous smile, he said: “Yes, there are many stories now told
about that affair!”
“Yes, stories!” repeated Rostóv loudly, looking with eyes suddenly grown
furious, now at Borís, now at Bolkónski. “Yes, many stories! But our stories are
the stories of men who have been under the enemy’s fire! Our stories have some
weight, not like the stories of those fellows on the staff who get rewards without
doing anything!”
“Of whom you imagine me to be one?” said Prince Andrew, with a quiet and
particularly amiable smile.
A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this man’s self-
possession mingled at that moment in Rostóv’s soul.
“I am not talking about you,” he said, “I don’t know you and, frankly, I don’t
want to. I am speaking of the staff in general.”
“And I will tell you this,” Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of quiet
authority, “you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree with you that it would
be very easy to do so if you haven’t sufficient self-respect, but admit that the
time and place are very badly chosen. In a day or two we shall all have to take
part in a greater and more serious duel, and besides, Drubetskóy, who says he is
an old friend of yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to
displease you. However,” he added rising, “you know my name and where to
find me, but don’t forget that I do not regard either myself or you as having been
at all insulted, and as a man older than you, my advice is to let the matter drop.
Well then, on Friday after the review I shall expect you, Drubetskóy. Au revoir!”
exclaimed Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both he went out.
Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostóv think of what he ought to
have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He ordered
his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Borís, rode home. Should he go to
headquarters next day and challenge that affected adjutant, or really let the
matter drop, was the question that worried him all the way. He thought angrily of
the pleasure he would have at seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud
man when covered by his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of all the men
he knew there was none he would so much like to have for a friend as that very
adjutant whom he so hated.
CHAPTER VIII
The day after Rostóv had been to see Borís, a review was held of the Austrian
and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia and those who had
been campaigning under Kutúzov. The two Emperors, the Russian with his heir
the Tsarévich, and the Austrian with the Archduke, inspected the allied army of
eighty thousand men.
From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move, forming up on
the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and bayonets moved and
halted at the officers’ command, turned with banners flying, formed up at
intervals, and wheeled round other similar masses of infantry in different
uniforms; now was heard the rhythmic beat of hoofs and the jingling of showy
cavalry in blue, red, and green braided uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen
in front mounted on black, roan, or gray horses; then again, spreading out with
the brazen clatter of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the gun
carriages and with the smell of linstocks, came the artillery which crawled
between the infantry and cavalry and took up its appointed position. Not only the
generals in full parade uniforms, with their thin or thick waists drawn in to the
utmost, their red necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and wearing scarves and
all their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded officers, but every soldier
with his freshly washed and shaven face and his weapons clean and polished to
the utmost, and every horse groomed till its coat shone like satin and every hair
of its wetted mane lay smooth—felt that no small matter was happening, but an
important and solemn affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of
his own insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and yet
at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that enormous whole.
From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by ten
o’clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were drawn up on the vast
field. The whole army was extended in three lines: the cavalry in front, behind it
the artillery, and behind that again the infantry.
A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The three parts
of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutúzov’s fighting army (with the
Pávlograds on the right flank of the front); those recently arrived from Russia,
both Guards and regiments of the line; and the Austrian troops. But they all
stood in the same lines, under one command, and in a like order.
Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: “They’re coming! They’re
coming!” Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final preparation swept over
all the troops.
From the direction of Olmütz in front of them, a group was seen approaching.
And at that moment, though the day was still, a light gust of wind blowing over
the army slightly stirred the streamers on the lances and the unfolded standards
fluttered against their staffs. It looked as if by that slight motion the army itself
was expressing its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard
shouting: “Eyes front!” Then, like the crowing of cocks at sunrise, this was
repeated by others from various sides and all became silent.
In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard. This was the
Emperors’ suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank, and the trumpets of the
first cavalry regiment played the general march. It seemed as though not the
trumpeters were playing, but as if the army itself, rejoicing at the Emperors’
approach, had naturally burst into music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful
kindly voice of the Emperor Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of
greeting, and the first regiment roared “Hurrah!” so deafeningly, continuously,
and joyfully that the men themselves were awed by their multitude and the
immensity of the power they constituted.
Rostóv, standing in the front lines of Kutúzov’s army which the Tsar
approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in that army: a
feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of might, and a passionate
attraction to him who was the cause of this triumph.
He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass (and he himself
an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and water, commit crime, die,
or perform deeds of highest heroism, and so he could not but tremble and his
heart stand still at the imminence of that word.
“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” thundered from all sides, one regiment after
another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and then “Hurrah!”...
Then the general march, and again “Hurrah! Hurrah!” growing ever stronger and
fuller and merging into a deafening roar.
Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and immobility seemed
like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it became alive, its thunder joining
the roar of the whole line along which he had already passed. Through the
terrible and deafening roar of those voices, amid the square masses of troops
standing motionless as if turned to stone, hundreds of riders composing the
suites moved carelessly but symmetrically and above all freely, and in front of
them two men—the Emperors. Upon them the undivided, tensely passionate
attention of that whole mass of men was concentrated.
The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse
Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his pleasant
face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone’s attention.
Rostóv was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight had
recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within twenty
paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of his handsome,
happy young face, he experienced a feeling of tenderness and ecstasy such as he
had never before known. Every trait and every movement of the Tsar’s seemed
to him enchanting.
Stopping in front of the Pávlograds, the Tsar said something in French to the
Austrian Emperor and smiled.
Seeing that smile, Rostóv involuntarily smiled himself and felt a still stronger
flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show that love in some way and
knowing that this was impossible was ready to cry. The Tsar called the colonel of
the regiment and said a few words to him.
“Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?” thought
Rostóv. “I should die of happiness!”
The Tsar addressed the officers also: “I thank you all, gentlemen, I thank you
with my whole heart.” To Rostóv every word sounded like a voice from heaven.
How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!
“You have earned the St. George’s standards and will be worthy of them.”
“Oh, to die, to die for him,” thought Rostóv.
The Tsar said something more which Rostóv did not hear, and the soldiers,
straining their lungs, shouted “Hurrah!”
Rostóv too, bending over his saddle, shouted “Hurrah!” with all his might,
feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, if only to express his
rapture fully.
The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if undecided.
“How can the Emperor be undecided?” thought Rostóv, but then even this
indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like everything else the Tsar
did.
That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar’s foot, in the narrow pointed
boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the bobtailed bay mare he rode, his
hand in a white glove gathered up the reins, and he moved off accompanied by
an irregularly swaying sea of aides-de-camp. Farther and farther he rode away,
stopping at other regiments, till at last only his white plumes were visible to
Rostóv from amid the suites that surrounded the Emperors.
Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostóv noticed Bolkónski, sitting his horse
indolently and carelessly. Rostóv recalled their quarrel of yesterday and the
question presented itself whether he ought or ought not to challenge Bolkónski.
“Of course not!” he now thought. “Is it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a
moment? At a time of such love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do
any of our quarrels and affronts matter? I love and forgive everybody now.”
When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops began a
ceremonial march past him, and Rostóv on Bedouin, recently purchased from
Denísov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron—that is, alone and in full view
of the Emperor.
Before he reached him, Rostóv, who was a splendid horseman, spurred
Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in which the animal
went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to his chest, his tail extended,
Bedouin, as if also conscious of the Emperor’s eye upon him, passed splendidly,
lifting his feet with a high and graceful action, as if flying through the air
without touching the ground.
Rostóv himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and feeling
himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a frowning but blissful
face “like a vewy devil,” as Denísov expressed it.
“Fine fellows, the Pávlograds!” remarked the Emperor.
“My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the fire this
instant!” thought Rostóv.
When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also Kutúzov’s,
collected in groups and began to talk about the awards, about the Austrians and
their uniforms, about their lines, about Bonaparte, and how badly the latter
would fare now, especially if the Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side.
But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander. His
every word and movement was described with ecstasy.
They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against the enemy
under the Emperor’s command. Commanded by the Emperor himself they could
not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: so thought Rostóv and most of
the officers after the review.
All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two battles would
have made them.
CHAPTER IX
The day after the review, Borís, in his best uniform and with his comrade
Berg’s best wishes for success, rode to Olmütz to see Bolkónski, wishing to
profit by his friendliness and obtain for himself the best post he could—
preferably that of adjutant to some important personage, a position in the army
which seemed to him most attractive. “It is all very well for Rostóv, whose father
sends him ten thousand rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe to
anybody and not be anyone’s lackey, but I who have nothing but my brains have
to make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must avail myself of
them!” he reflected.
He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmütz that day, but the appearance of the
town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were stationed and the
two Emperors were living with their suites, households, and courts only
strengthened his desire to belong to that higher world.
He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman’s uniform, all these exalted
personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages with their plumes,
ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military men, seemed so immeasurably
above him, an insignificant officer of the Guards, that they not only did not wish
to, but simply could not, be aware of his existence. At the quarters of the
commander in chief, Kutúzov, where he inquired for Bolkónski, all the adjutants
and even the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a
great many officers like him were always coming there and that everybody was
heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather because of it, next day, November
15, after dinner he again went to Olmütz and, entering the house occupied by
Kutúzov, asked for Bolkónski. Prince Andrew was in and Borís was shown into
a large hall probably formerly used for dancing, but in which five beds now
stood, and furniture of various kinds: a table, chairs, and a clavichord. One
adjutant, nearest the door, was sitting at the table in a Persian dressing gown,
writing. Another, the red, stout Nesvítski, lay on a bed with his arms under his
head, laughing with an officer who had sat down beside him. A third was playing
a Viennese waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on the clavichord, sang
the tune. Bolkónski was not there. None of these gentlemen changed his position
on seeing Borís. The one who was writing and whom Borís addressed turned
round crossly and told him Bolkónski was on duty and that he should go through
the door on the left into the reception room if he wished to see him. Borís
thanked him and went to the reception room, where he found some ten officers
and generals.
When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously (with
that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says, “If it were not
my duty I would not talk to you for a moment”), was listening to an old Russian
general with decorations, who stood very erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier’s
obsequious expression on his purple face, reporting something.
“Very well, then, be so good as to wait,” said Prince Andrew to the general, in
Russian, speaking with the French intonation he affected when he wished to
speak contemptuously, and noticing Borís, Prince Andrew, paying no more heed
to the general who ran after him imploring him to hear something more, nodded
and turned to him with a cheerful smile.
At that moment Borís clearly realized what he had before surmised, that in the
army, besides the subordination and discipline prescribed in the military code,
which he and the others knew in the regiment, there was another, more
important, subordination, which made this tight-laced, purple-faced general wait
respectfully while Captain Prince Andrew, for his own pleasure, chose to chat
with Lieutenant Drubetskóy. More than ever was Borís resolved to serve in
future not according to the written code, but under this unwritten law. He felt
now that merely by having been recommended to Prince Andrew he had already
risen above the general who at the front had the power to annihilate him, a
lieutenant of the Guards. Prince Andrew came up to him and took his hand.
“I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about with
Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions. When
Germans start being accurate, there’s no end to it!”
Borís smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to as
something generally known. But it was the first time he had heard Weyrother’s
name, or even the term “dispositions.”
“Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have been
thinking about you.”
“Yes, I was thinking”—for some reason Borís could not help blushing—“of
asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter from Prince Kurágin about
me. I only wanted to ask because I fear the Guards won’t be in action,” he added
as if in apology.
“All right, all right. We’ll talk it over,” replied Prince Andrew. “Only let me
report this gentleman’s business, and I shall be at your disposal.”
While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general, that
gentleman—evidently not sharing Borís’ conception of the advantages of the
unwritten code of subordination—looked so fixedly at the presumptuous
lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he had to say to the adjutant that
Borís felt uncomfortable. He turned away and waited impatiently for Prince
Andrew’s return from the commander in chief’s room.
“You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you,” said Prince
Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the clavichord was. “It’s
no use your going to the commander in chief. He would say a lot of pleasant
things, ask you to dinner” (“That would not be bad as regards the unwritten
code,” thought Borís), “but nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a
battalion of us aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is what we’ll do: I have a
good friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince Dolgorúkov; and
though you may not know it, the fact is that now Kutúzov with his staff and all
of us count for nothing. Everything is now centered round the Emperor. So we
will go to Dolgorúkov; I have to go there anyhow and I have already spoken to
him about you. We shall see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find a
place for you somewhere nearer the sun.”
Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a young
man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining help of this kind
for another, which from pride he would never accept for himself, he kept in
touch with the circle which confers success and which attracted him. He very
readily took up Borís’ cause and went with him to Dolgorúkov.
It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmütz occupied by
the Emperors and their retinues.
That same day a council of war had been held in which all the members of the
Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that council, contrary to the
views of the old generals Kutúzov and Prince Schwartzenberg, it had been
decided to advance immediately and give battle to Bonaparte. The council of
war was just over when Prince Andrew accompanied by Borís arrived at the
palace to find Dolgorúkov. Everyone at headquarters was still under the spell of
the day’s council, at which the party of the young had triumphed. The voices of
those who counseled delay and advised waiting for something else before
advancing had been so completely silenced and their arguments confuted by
such conclusive evidence of the advantages of attacking that what had been
discussed at the council—the coming battle and the victory that would certainly
result from it—no longer seemed to be in the future but in the past. All the
advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior to
Napoleon’s, were concentrated in one place, the troops inspired by the Emperors’
presence were eager for action. The strategic position where the operations
would take place was familiar in all its details to the Austrian General
Weyrother: a lucky accident had ordained that the Austrian army should
maneuver the previous year on the very fields where the French had now to be
fought; the adjacent locality was known and shown in every detail on the maps,
and Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing.
Dolgorúkov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just returned from
the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud of the victory that had been
gained. Prince Andrew introduced his protégé, but Prince Dolgorúkov politely
and firmly pressing his hand said nothing to Borís and, evidently unable to
suppress the thoughts which were uppermost in his mind at that moment,
addressed Prince Andrew in French.
“Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that the one that
will result from it will be as victorious! However, dear fellow,” he said abruptly
and eagerly, “I must confess to having been unjust to the Austrians and
especially to Weyrother. What exactitude, what minuteness, what knowledge of
the locality, what foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to the
smallest detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions better than our present ones
could have been devised. This combination of Austrian precision with Russian
valor—what more could be wished for?”
“So the attack is definitely resolved on?” asked Bolkónski.
“And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte has
decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received from him today for
the Emperor.” Dolgorúkov smiled significantly.
“Is that so? And what did he say?” inquired Bolkónski.
“What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain time. I tell you
he is in our hands, that’s certain! But what was most amusing,” he continued,
with a sudden, good-natured laugh, “was that we could not think how to address
the reply! If not as ‘Consul’ and of course not as ‘Emperor,’ it seemed to me it
should be to ‘General Bonaparte.’”
“But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him General
Bonaparte, there is a difference,” remarked Bolkónski.
“That’s just it,” interrupted Dolgorúkov quickly, laughing. “You know Bilíbin
—he’s a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him as ‘Usurper and
Enemy of Mankind.’”
Dolgorúkov laughed merrily.
“Only that?” said Bolkónski.
“All the same, it was Bilíbin who found a suitable form for the address. He is
a wise and clever fellow.”
“What was it?”
“To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
français,” said Dolgorúkov, with grave satisfaction. “Good, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but he will dislike it extremely,” said Bolkónski.
“Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he’s dined with him—the
present Emperor—more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met a more
cunning or subtle diplomatist—you know, a combination of French adroitness
and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale about him and Count Markóv?
Count Markóv was the only man who knew how to handle him. You know the
story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!”
And the talkative Dolgorúkov, turning now to Borís, now to Prince Andrew,
told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markóv, our ambassador, purposely dropped
a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking at Markóv, probably expecting
Markóv to pick it up for him, and how Markóv immediately dropped his own
beside it and picked it up without touching Bonaparte’s.
“Delightful!” said Bolkónski. “But I have come to you, Prince, as a petitioner
on behalf of this young man. You see...” but before Prince Andrew could finish,
an aide-de-camp came in to summon Dolgorúkov to the Emperor.
“Oh, what a nuisance,” said Dolgorúkov, getting up hurriedly and pressing the
hands of Prince Andrew and Borís. “You know I should be very glad to do all in
my power both for you and for this dear young man.” Again he pressed the hand
of the latter with an expression of good-natured, sincere, and animated levity.
“But you see... another time!”
Borís was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher powers as he
felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious that here he was in contact
with the springs that set in motion the enormous movements of the mass of
which in his regiment he felt himself a tiny, obedient, and insignificant atom.
They followed Prince Dolgorúkov out into the corridor and met—coming out of
the door of the Emperor’s room by which Dolgorúkov had entered—a short man
in civilian clothes with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw which, without
spoiling his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and shiftiness of expression. This
short man nodded to Dolgorúkov as to an intimate friend and stared at Prince
Andrew with cool intensity, walking straight toward him and evidently expecting
him to bow or to step out of his way. Prince Andrew did neither: a look of
animosity appeared on his face and the other turned away and went down the
side of the corridor.
“Who was that?” asked Borís.
“He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men—the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartorýski.... It is such men as he
who decide the fate of nations,” added Bolkónski with a sigh he could not
suppress, as they passed out of the palace.
Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle of Austerlitz,
Borís was unable to see either Prince Andrew or Dolgorúkov again and remained
for a while with the Ismáylov regiment.
CHAPTER X
At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denísov’s squadron, in which
Nicholas Rostóv served and which was in Prince Bagratión’s detachment, moved
from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into action as arranged,
and after going behind other columns for about two thirds of a mile was stopped
on the highroad. Rostóv saw the Cossacks and then the first and second
squadrons of hussars and infantry battalions and artillery pass by and go forward
and then Generals Bagratión and Dolgorúkov ride past with their adjutants. All
the fear before action which he had experienced as previously, all the inner
struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of distinguishing himself as a true
hussar in this battle, had been wasted. Their squadron remained in reserve and
Nicholas Rostóv spent that day in a dull and wretched mood. At nine in the
morning, he heard firing in front and shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being
brought back (there were not many of them), and at last he saw how a whole
detachment of French cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sótnya of
Cossacks. Evidently the affair was over and, though not big, had been a
successful engagement. The men and officers returning spoke of a brilliant
victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau and the capture of a whole
French squadron. The day was bright and sunny after a sharp night frost, and the
cheerful glitter of that autumn day was in keeping with the news of victory
which was conveyed, not only by the tales of those who had taken part in it, but
also by the joyful expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and
adjutants, as they passed Rostóv going or coming. And Nicholas, who had vainly
suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and had spent that happy day in
inactivity, was all the more depressed.
“Come here, Wostóv. Let’s dwink to dwown our gwief!” shouted Denísov,
who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some food.
The officers gathered round Denísov’s canteen, eating and talking.
“There! They are bringing another!” cried one of the officers, indicating a
captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot by two Cossacks.
One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he had taken
from the prisoner.
“Sell us that horse!” Denísov called out to the Cossacks.
“If you like, your honor!”
The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner. The
French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German accent.
He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when he heard some
French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers, addressing first one,
then another. He said he would not have been taken, it was not his fault but the
corporal’s who had sent him to seize some horsecloths, though he had told him
the Russians were there. And at every word he added: “But don’t hurt my little
horse!” and stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where he
was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,
imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly discipline
and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our rearguard all the freshness
of atmosphere of the French army, which was so alien to us.
The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostóv, being the richest
of the officers now that he had received his money, bought it.
“But don’t hurt my little horse!” said the Alsatian good-naturedly to Rostóv
when the animal was handed over to the hussar.
Rostóv smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.
“Alley! Alley!” said the Cossack, touching the prisoner’s arm to make him go
on.
“The Emperor! The Emperor!” was suddenly heard among the hussars.
All began to run and bustle, and Rostóv saw coming up the road behind him
several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment everyone was in his
place, waiting.
Rostóv did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.
Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected mood amid
people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every thought of himself had
vanished. He was filled with happiness at his nearness to the Emperor. He felt
that this nearness by itself made up to him for the day he had lost. He was happy
as a lover when the longed-for moment of meeting arrives. Not daring to look
round and without looking round, he was ecstatically conscious of his approach.
He felt it not only from the sound of the hoofs of the approaching cavalcade, but
because as he drew near everything grew brighter, more joyful, more significant,
and more festive around him. Nearer and nearer to Rostóv came that sun
shedding beams of mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself
enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and majestic
voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with Rostóv’s feeling, there
was a deathly stillness amid which was heard the Emperor’s voice.
“The Pávlograd hussars?” he inquired.
“The reserves, sire!” replied a voice, a very human one compared to that
which had said: “The Pávlograd hussars?”
The Emperor drew level with Rostóv and halted. Alexander’s face was even
more beautiful than it had been three days before at the review. It shone with
such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that it suggested the liveliness of a
fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was the face of the majestic Emperor. Casually,
while surveying the squadron, the Emperor’s eyes met Rostóv’s and rested on
them for not more than two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood
what was going on in Rostóv’s soul (it seemed to Rostóv that he understood
everything), at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two seconds into
Rostóv’s face. A gentle, mild light poured from them. Then all at once he raised
his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left foot, and galloped on.
The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the battle
and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at twelve o’clock left the third
column with which he had been and galloped toward the vanguard. Before he
came up with the hussars, several adjutants met him with news of the successful
result of the action.
This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron, was
represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the Emperor and the
whole army, especially while the smoke hung over the battlefield, believed that
the French had been defeated and were retreating against their will. A few
minutes after the Emperor had passed, the Pávlograd division was ordered to
advance. In Wischau itself, a petty German town, Rostóv saw the Emperor again.
In the market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
Emperor’s arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom there had not
been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his suite of officers and
courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a different one from that which
he had ridden at the review, and bending to one side he gracefully held a gold
lorgnette to his eyes and looked at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his
uncovered head. The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his
proximity to the Emperor shocked Rostóv. Rostóv saw how the Emperor’s rather
round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how his left
foot began convulsively tapping the horse’s side with the spur, and how the well-
trained horse looked round unconcerned and did not stir. An adjutant,
dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms to place him on a stretcher that
had been brought. The soldier groaned.
“Gently, gently! Can’t you do it more gently?” said the Emperor apparently
suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
Rostóv saw tears filling the Emperor’s eyes and heard him, as he was riding
away, say to Czartorýski: “What a terrible thing war is: what a terrible thing!
Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!”
The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within sight of the
enemy’s lines, which all day long had yielded ground to us at the least firing.
The Emperor’s gratitude was announced to the vanguard, rewards were
promised, and the men received a double ration of vodka. The campfires
crackled and the soldiers’ songs resounded even more merrily than on the
previous night. Denísov celebrated his promotion to the rank of major, and
Rostóv, who had already drunk enough, at the end of the feast proposed the
Emperor’s health. “Not ‘our Sovereign, the Emperor,’ as they say at official
dinners,” said he, “but the health of our Sovereign, that good, enchanting, and
great man! Let us drink to his health and to the certain defeat of the French!”
“If we fought before,” he said, “not letting the French pass, as at Schön
Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We will all die for
him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not saying it right, I have
drunk a good deal—but that is how I feel, and so do you too! To the health of
Alexander the First! Hurrah!”
“Hurrah!” rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
And the old cavalry captain, Kírsten, shouted enthusiastically and no less
sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostóv.
When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kírsten filled others
and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand to the soldiers’ bonfires
and with his long gray mustache, his white chest showing under his open shirt,
he stood in a majestic pose in the light of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.
“Lads! here’s to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our enemies!
Hurrah!” he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar’s baritone.
The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.
Late that night, when all had separated, Denísov with his short hand patted his
favorite, Rostóv, on the shoulder.
“As there’s no one to fall in love with on campaign, he’s fallen in love with
the Tsar,” he said.
“Denísov, don’t make fun of it!” cried Rostóv. “It is such a lofty, beautiful
feeling, such a...”
“I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove...”
“No, you don’t understand!”
And Rostóv got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of
what happiness it would be to die—not in saving the Emperor’s life (he did not
even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his eyes. He really was in
love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms and the hope of future
triumph. And he was not the only man to experience that feeling during those
memorable days preceding the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the
Russian army were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the
glory of the Russian arms.
CHAPTER XI
The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his physician, was
repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and among the troops near by
the news spread that the Emperor was unwell. He ate nothing and had slept
badly that night, those around him reported. The cause of this indisposition was
the strong impression made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and
wounded.
At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a flag of
truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was brought into
Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The Emperor had only just
fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At midday he was admitted to the
Emperor, and an hour later he rode off with Prince Dolgorúkov to the advanced
post of the French army.
It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a meeting
with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a personal interview was
refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince Dolgorúkov, the victor at Wischau,
was sent with Savary to negotiate with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations,
these negotiations were actuated by a real desire for peace.
Toward evening Dolgorúkov came back, went straight to the Tsar, and
remained alone with him for a long time.
On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced two days’
march and the enemy’s outposts after a brief interchange of shots retreated. In
the highest army circles from midday on the nineteenth, a great, excitedly
bustling activity began which lasted till the morning of the twentieth, when the
memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.
Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity—the eager talk, running to and fro,
and dispatching of adjutants—was confined to the Emperor’s headquarters. But
on the afternoon of that day, this activity reached Kutúzov’s headquarters and the
staffs of the commanders of columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to
all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth to the
twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the
hum of voices, and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles
long.
The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor’s headquarters in
the morning and had started the whole movement that followed was like the first
movement of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One wheel slowly moved,
another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and
faster, levers and cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the
hands to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the military
machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indifferently
quiescent till the moment when motion is transmitted to them are the parts of the
mechanism which the impulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles
as the cogs engage one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity
of their movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though
it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes when
the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to creak and joins
in the common motion the result and aim of which are beyond its ken.
Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable wheels
and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands which show the
time, so the result of all the complicated human activities of 160,000 Russians
and French—all their passions, desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings,
outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm—was only the loss of the battle of
Austerlitz, the so-called battle of the three Emperors—that is to say, a slow
movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
commander in chief.
At six in the evening, Kutúzov went to the Emperor’s headquarters and after
staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand marshal of the court,
Count Tolstóy.
Bolkónski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the coming
action from Dolgorúkov. He felt that Kutúzov was upset and dissatisfied about
something and that at headquarters they were dissatisfied with him, and also that
at the Emperor’s headquarters everyone adopted toward him the tone of men
who know something others do not know: he therefore wished to speak to
Dolgorúkov.
“Well, how d’you do, my dear fellow?” said Dolgorúkov, who was sitting at
tea with Bilíbin. “The fete is for tomorrow. How is your old fellow? Out of
sorts?”
“I won’t say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be heard.”
“But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he talks
sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte fears
nothing so much as a general battle is impossible.”
“Yes, you have seen him?” said Prince Andrew. “Well, what is Bonaparte
like? How did he impress you?”
“Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a general
engagement,” repeated Dolgorúkov, evidently prizing this general conclusion
which he had arrived at from his interview with Napoleon. “If he weren’t afraid
of a battle why did he ask for that interview? Why negotiate, and above all why
retreat, when to retreat is so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe
me, he is afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!”
“But tell me, what is he like, eh?” said Prince Andrew again.
“He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him ‘Your
Majesty,’ but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me! That’s the sort of man he
is, and nothing more,” replied Dolgorúkov, looking round at Bilíbin with a smile.
“Despite my great respect for old Kutúzov,” he continued, “we should be a
nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a chance to escape,
or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in our hands! No, we mustn’t
forget Suvórov and his rule—not to put yourself in a position to be attacked, but
yourself to attack. Believe me in war the energy of young men often shows the
way better than all the experience of old Cunctators.”
“But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the outposts
today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces are situated,” said Prince
Andrew.
He wished to explain to Dolgorúkov a plan of attack he had himself formed.
“Oh, that is all the same,” Dolgorúkov said quickly, and getting up he spread a
map on the table. “All eventualities have been foreseen. If he is standing before
Brünn...”
And Prince Dolgorúkov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother’s plan of
a flanking movement.
Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might have
been as good as Weyrother’s, but for the disadvantage that Weyrother’s had
already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began to demonstrate the
defects of the latter and the merits of his own plan, Prince Dolgorúkov ceased to
listen to him and gazed absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew’s
face.
“There will be a council of war at Kutúzov’s tonight, though; you can say all
this there,” remarked Dolgorúkov.
“I will do so,” said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
“Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?” said Bilíbin, who, till then,
had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and now was evidently
ready with a joke. “Whether tomorrow brings victory or defeat, the glory of our
Russian arms is secure. Except your Kutúzov, there is not a single Russian in
command of a column! The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte
de Langeron, le Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally
Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names.”
“Be quiet, backbiter!” said Dolgorúkov. “It is not true; there are now two
Russians, Milorádovich, and Dokhtúrov, and there would be a third, Count
Arakchéev, if his nerves were not too weak.”
“However, I think General Kutúzov has come out,” said Prince Andrew. “I
wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!” he added and went out after
shaking hands with Dolgorúkov and Bilíbin.
On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutúzov, who
was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow’s battle.
Kutúzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied: “I think the
battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstóy and asked him to tell the Emperor.
What do you think he replied? ‘But, my dear general, I am engaged with rice and
cutlets, look after military matters yourself!’ Yes... That was the answer I got!”
CHAPTER XII
Shortly after nine o’clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his plans to
Kutúzov’s quarters where the council of war was to be held. All the commanders
of columns were summoned to the commander in chief’s and with the exception
of Prince Bagratión, who declined to come, were all there at the appointed time.
Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his eagerness
and briskness presented a marked contrast to the dissatisfied and drowsy
Kutúzov, who reluctantly played the part of chairman and president of the
council of war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be at the head of a movement
that had already become unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill
harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did
not know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to consider what this
movement might lead to. Weyrother had been twice that evening to the enemy’s
picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and
Austrian, to report and explain, and to his headquarters where he had dictated the
dispositions in German, and now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutúzov’s.
He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the commander in
chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and indistinctly, without looking at the
man he was addressing, and did not reply to questions put to him. He was
bespattered with mud and had a pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the
same time he was haughty and self-confident.
Kutúzov was occupying a nobleman’s castle of modest dimensions near
Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the commander in
chief’s office were gathered Kutúzov himself, Weyrother, and the members of
the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited Prince Bagratión to
begin the council. At last Bagratión’s orderly came with the news that the prince
could not attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the commander in chief of
this and, availing himself of permission previously given him by Kutúzov to be
present at the council, he remained in the room.
“Since Prince Bagratión is not coming, we may begin,” said Weyrother,
hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on which an enormous
map of the environs of Brünn was spread out.
Kutúzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over his
collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low chair, with his podgy old
hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the sound of Weyrother’s voice, he
opened his one eye with an effort.
“Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late,” said he, and nodding his head he
let it droop and again closed his eye.
If at first the members of the council thought that Kutúzov was pretending to
sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading that followed proved that
the commander in chief at that moment was absorbed by a far more serious
matter than a desire to show his contempt for the dispositions or anything else—
he was engaged in satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was
asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced
at Kutúzov and, having convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a paper
and in a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the dispositions for the
impending battle, under a heading which he also read out:
“Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz and
Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805.”
The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began as follows:
“As the enemy’s left wing rests on wooded hills and his right extends along
Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there, while we, on the other
hand, with our left wing by far outflank his right, it is advantageous to attack the
enemy’s latter wing especially if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and
Kobelnitz, whereby we can both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain
between Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of
Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy’s front. For this object it is
necessary that... The first column marches... The second column marches... The
third column marches...” and so on, read Weyrother.
The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult dispositions. The tall,
fair-haired General Buxhöwden stood, leaning his back against the wall, his eyes
fixed on a burning candle, and seemed not to listen or even to wish to be thought
to listen. Exactly opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed
upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Milorádovich in a
military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands on his knees, and his
shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at Weyrother’s face, and
only turned away his eyes when the Austrian chief of staff finished reading.
Then Milorádovich looked round significantly at the other generals. But one
could not tell from that significant look whether he agreed or disagreed and was
satisfied or not with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron
who, with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern French face during
the whole time of the reading, gazed at his delicate fingers which rapidly twirled
by its corners a gold snuffbox on which was a portrait. In the middle of one of
the longest sentences, he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised his
head, and with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his thin lips
interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the Austrian general,
continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his elbows, as if to say: “You can
tell me your views later, but now be so good as to look at the map and listen.”
Langeron lifted his eyes with an expression of perplexity, turned round to
Milorádovich as if seeking an explanation, but meeting the latter’s impressive
but meaningless gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his
snuffbox.
“A geography lesson!” he muttered as if to himself, but loud enough to be
heard.
Przebyszéwski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his hand to his
ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in attention. Dohktúrov, a
little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an assiduous and modest mien, and
stooping over the outspread map conscientiously studied the dispositions and the
unfamiliar locality. He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not
clearly heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and
Dohktúrov noted them down.
When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron again
brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or at anyone in
particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry out such a plan in which the
enemy’s position was assumed to be known, whereas it was perhaps not known,
since the enemy was in movement. Langeron’s objections were valid but it was
obvious that their chief aim was to show General Weyrother—who had read his
dispositions with as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school
children—that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him
something in military matters.
When the monotonous sound of Weyrother’s voice ceased, Kutúzov opened
his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel is
interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, “So you are still
at that silly business!” quickly closed his eye again, and let his head sink still
lower.
Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother’s vanity as
author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily attack instead of
being attacked, and so render the whole of this plan perfectly worthless.
Weyrother met all objections with a firm and contemptuous smile, evidently
prepared beforehand to meet all objections be they what they might.
“If he could attack us, he would have done so today,” said he.
“So you think he is powerless?” said Langeron.
“He has forty thousand men at most,” replied Weyrother, with the smile of a
doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of a case.
“In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,” said Langeron,
with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round for support to Milorádovich
who was near him.
But Milorádovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything rather
than of what the generals were disputing about.
“Ma foi!” said he, “tomorrow we shall see all that on the battlefield.”
Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it was
strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals and to have to
prove to them what he had not merely convinced himself of, but had also
convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
“The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard from his
camp,” said he. “What does that mean? Either he is retreating, which is the only
thing we need fear, or he is changing his position.” (He smiled ironically.) “But
even if he also took up a position in the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great
deal of trouble and all our arrangements to the minutest detail remain the same.”
“How is that?...” began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting an
opportunity to express his doubts.
Kutúzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the generals.
“Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow—or rather for today, for it is past
midnight—cannot now be altered,” said he. “You have heard them, and we shall
all do our duty. But before a battle, there is nothing more important...” he
paused, “than to have a good sleep.”
He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was past midnight.
Prince Andrew went out.
The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to express his
opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy impression. Whether
Dolgorúkov and Weyrother, or Kutúzov, Langeron, and the others who did not
approve of the plan of attack, were right—he did not know. “But was it really not
possible for Kutúzov to state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that
on account of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and
my life, my life,” he thought, “must be risked?”
“Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow,” he thought. And
suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of most distant, most intimate,
memories rose in his imagination: he remembered his last parting from his father
and his wife; he remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her
pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously emotional
and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he was billeted with
Nesvítski and began to walk up and down before it.
The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed mysteriously.
“Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!” he thought. “Tomorrow everything may be over for
me! All these memories will be no more, none of them will have any meaning
for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even certainly, I have a presentiment that for the first
time I shall have to show all I can do.” And his fancy pictured the battle, its loss,
the concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all the
commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for which he had so long
waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly and clearly expresses his opinion
to Kutúzov, to Weyrother, and to the Emperors. All are struck by the justness of
his views, but no one undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a
division—stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements—leads his
division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone. “But death and
suffering?” suggested another voice. Prince Andrew, however, did not answer
that voice and went on dreaming of his triumphs. The dispositions for the next
battle are planned by him alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutúzov’s
staff, but he does everything alone. The next battle is won by him alone.
Kutúzov is removed and he is appointed... “Well and then?” asked the other
voice. “If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed, well...
what then?...” “Well then,” Prince Andrew answered himself, “I don’t know
what will happen and don’t want to know, and can’t, but if I want this—want
glory, want to be known to men, want to be loved by them, it is not my fault that
I want it and want nothing but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I
shall never tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame
and men’s esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family—I fear nothing. And
precious and dear as many persons are to me—father, sister, wife—those dearest
to me—yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would give them all at once for
a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of love from men I don’t know and
never shall know, for the love of these men here,” he thought, as he listened to
voices in Kutúzov’s courtyard. The voices were those of the orderlies who were
packing up; one voice, probably a coachman’s, was teasing Kutúzov’s old cook
whom Prince Andrew knew, and who was called Tit. He was saying, “Tit, I say,
Tit!”
“Well?” returned the old man.
“Go, Tit, thresh a bit!” said the wag.
“Oh, go to the devil!” called out a voice, drowned by the laughter of the
orderlies and servants.
“All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I value this
mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in this mist!”
CHAPTER XIII
That same night, Rostóv was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front of
Bagratión’s detachment. His hussars were placed along the line in couples and
he himself rode along the line trying to master the sleepiness that kept coming
over him. An enormous space, with our army’s campfires dimly glowing in the
fog, could be seen behind him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostóv could
see nothing, peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed
gray, now there was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer where
the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in his own eyes.
His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared—now the Emperor, now
Denísov, and now Moscow memories—and he again hurriedly opened his eyes
and saw close before him the head and ears of the horse he was riding, and
sometimes, when he came within six paces of them, the black figures of hussars,
but in the distance was still the same misty darkness. “Why not?... It might easily
happen,” thought Rostóv, “that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order
as he would to any other officer; he’ll say: ‘Go and find out what’s there.’ There
are many stories of his getting to know an officer in just such a chance way and
attaching him to himself! What if he gave me a place near him? Oh, how I would
guard him, how I would tell him the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!”
And in order to realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostóv
pictured to himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only
kill with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor.
Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.
“Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and watchword—shaft,
Olmütz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in reserve tomorrow,” he
thought. “I’ll ask leave to go to the front, this may be my only chance of seeing
the Emperor. It won’t be long now before I am off duty. I’ll take another turn and
when I get back I’ll go to the general and ask him.” He readjusted himself in the
saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars. It seemed
to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a sloping descent lit up, and
facing it a black knoll that seemed as steep as a wall. On this knoll there was a
white patch that Rostóv could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit
up by the moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even
thought something moved on that white spot. “I expect it’s snow... that spot... a
spot—une tache,” he thought. “There now... it’s not a tache... Natásha... sister,
black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won’t she be surprised when I tell her how I’ve seen
the Emperor?) Natásha... take my sabretache...”—“Keep to the right, your honor,
there are bushes here,” came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostóv was
riding in the act of falling asleep. Rostóv lifted his head that had sunk almost to
his horse’s mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was succumbing to
irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. “But what was I thinking? I mustn’t
forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor? No, that’s not it—that’s tomorrow. Oh
yes! Natásha... sabretache... saber them... Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars
with mustaches. Along the Tverskáya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I
thought about him too, just opposite Gúryev’s house... Old Gúryev.... Oh, but
Denísov’s a fine fellow. But that’s all nonsense. The chief thing is that the
Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to say something, but dared
not.... No, it was I who dared not. But that’s nonsense, the chief thing is not to
forget the important thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tásha, sabretache, oh, yes,
yes! That’s right!” And his head once more sank to his horse’s neck. All at once
it seemed to him that he was being fired at. “What? What? What?... Cut them
down! What?...” said Rostóv, waking up. At the moment he opened his eyes he
heard in front of him, where the enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands
of voices. His horse and the horse of the hussar near him pricked their ears at
these shouts. Over there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up and
went out again, then another, and all along the French line on the hill fires flared
up and the shouting grew louder and louder. Rostóv could hear the sound of
French words but could not distinguish them. The din of many voices was too
great; all he could hear was: “ahahah!” and “rrrr!”
“What’s that? What do you make of it?” said Rostóv to the hussar beside him.
“That must be the enemy’s camp!”
The hussar did not reply.
“Why, don’t you hear it?” Rostóv asked again, after waiting for a reply.
“Who can tell, your honor?” replied the hussar reluctantly.
“From the direction, it must be the enemy,” repeated Rostóv.
“It may be he or it may be nothing,” muttered the hussar. “It’s dark... Steady!”
he cried to his fidgeting horse.
Rostóv’s horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground, pricking
its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting grew still louder and
merged into a general roar that only an army of several thousand men could
produce. The lights spread farther and farther, probably along the line of the
French camp. Rostóv no longer wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of
the enemy army had a stimulating effect on him. “Vive l’Empereur!
l’Empereur!” he now heard distinctly.
“They can’t be far off, probably just beyond the stream,” he said to the hussar
beside him.
The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The sound of
horse’s hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars was heard, and out
of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of hussars suddenly appeared,
looming huge as an elephant.
“Your honor, the generals!” said the sergeant, riding up to Rostóv.
Rostóv, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode with the
sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the line. One was on
a white horse. Prince Bagratión and Prince Dolgorúkov with their adjutants had
come to witness the curious phenomenon of the lights and shouts in the enemy’s
camp. Rostóv rode up to Bagratión, reported to him, and then joined the
adjutants listening to what the generals were saying.
“Believe me,” said Prince Dolgorúkov, addressing Bagratión, “it is nothing
but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to kindle fires and make a
noise to deceive us.”
“Hardly,” said Bagratión. “I saw them this evening on that knoll; if they had
retreated they would have withdrawn from that too.... Officer!” said Bagratión to
Rostóv, “are the enemy’s skirmishers still there?”
“They were there this evening, but now I don’t know, your excellency. Shall I
go with some of my hussars to see?” replied Rostóv.
Bagratión stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostóv’s face in the mist.
“Well, go and see,” he said, after a pause.
“Yes, sir.”
Rostóv spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fédchenko and two other hussars,
told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the direction from which the
shouting came. He felt both frightened and pleased to be riding alone with three
hussars into that mysterious and dangerous misty distance where no one had
been before him. Bagratión called to him from the hill not to go beyond the
stream, but Rostóv pretended not to hear him and did not stop but rode on and
on, continually mistaking bushes for trees and gullies for men and continually
discovering his mistakes. Having descended the hill at a trot, he no longer saw
either our own or the enemy’s fires, but heard the shouting of the French more
loudly and distinctly. In the valley he saw before him something like a river, but
when he reached it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road he
reined in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride over
the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which gleamed white in the
mist would have been safer because it would be easier to see people coming
along it. “Follow me!” said he, crossed the road, and began riding up the hill at a
gallop toward the point where the French pickets had been standing that evening.
“Your honor, there he is!” cried one of the hussars behind him. And before
Rostóv had time to make out what the black thing was that had suddenly
appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a report, and a bullet
whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive sound passed out of hearing.
Another musket missed fire but flashed in the pan. Rostóv turned his horse and
galloped back. Four more reports followed at intervals, and the bullets passed
somewhere in the fog singing in different tones. Rostóv reined in his horse,
whose spirits had risen, like his own, at the firing, and went back at a footpace.
“Well, some more! Some more!” a merry voice was saying in his soul. But no
more shots came.
Only when approaching Bagratión did Rostóv let his horse gallop again, and
with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.
Dolgorúkov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had only lit
fires to deceive us.
“What does that prove?” he was saying as Rostóv rode up. “They might
retreat and leave the pickets.”
“It’s plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince,” said Bagratión. “Wait till
tomorrow morning, we’ll find out everything tomorrow.”
“The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was in the
evening,” reported Rostóv, stooping forward with his hand at the salute and
unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his ride and especially by the
sound of the bullets.
“Very good, very good,” said Bagratión. “Thank you, officer.”
“Your excellency,” said Rostóv, “may I ask a favor?”
“What is it?”
“Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached to the
first squadron?”
“What’s your name?”
“Count Rostóv.”
“Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me.”
“Count Ilyá Rostóv’s son?” asked Dolgorúkov.
But Rostóv did not reply.
“Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?”
“I will give the order.”
“Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the Emperor,”
thought Rostóv.
“Thank God!”
The fires and shouting in the enemy’s army were occasioned by the fact that
while Napoleon’s proclamation was being read to the troops the Emperor
himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing him, lit wisps of straw
and ran after him, shouting, “Vive l’Empereur!” Napoleon’s proclamation was as
follows:
Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the Austrian
army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at Hollabrünn and have
pursued ever since to this place. The position we occupy is a strong one, and
while they are marching to go round me on the right they will expose a flank to
me. Soldiers! I will myself direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you
with your habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy’s ranks, but
should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see your Emperor
exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for there must be no doubt of
victory, especially on this day when what is at stake is the honor of the French
infantry, so necessary to the honor of our nation.
Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let every man
be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these hirelings of England,
inspired by such hatred of our nation! This victory will conclude our campaign
and we can return to winter quarters, where fresh French troops who are being
raised in France will join us, and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my
people, of you, and of myself.
NAPOLEON
CHAPTER XIV
At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the center, the
reserves, and Bagratión’s right flank had not yet moved, but on the left flank the
columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, which were to be the first to descend
the heights to attack the French right flank and drive it into the Bohemian
mountains according to plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the
campfires, into which they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes
smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and
breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to
warm themselves, gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the remains
of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that they did not want or
could not carry away with them. Austrian column guides were moving in and out
among the Russian troops and served as heralds of the advance. As soon as an
Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding officer’s quarters, the
regiment began to move: the soldiers ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into
their boots, their bags into the carts, got their muskets ready, and formed rank.
The officers buttoned up their coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and
moved along the ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and
packed the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and
regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final instructions,
orders, and commissions to the baggage men who remained behind, and the
monotonous tramp of thousands of feet resounded. The column moved forward
without knowing where and unable, from the masses around them, the smoke
and the increasing fog, to see either the place they were leaving or that to which
they were going.
A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his regiment as much
as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has walked, whatever strange,
unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is always surrounded
by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has
around him the same comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Iván
Mítrich, the same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor
rarely cares to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the day of
battle—heaven knows how and whence—a stern note of which all are conscious
sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army, announcing the approach of
something decisive and solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity.
On the day of battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their
regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning what is
going on around them.
The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they could not
see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and level ground like
cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might encounter an enemy
invisible ten paces off. But the columns advanced for a long time, always in the
same fog, descending and ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures,
going over new and unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On
the contrary, the soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides,
other Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier felt
glad to know that to the unknown place where he was going, many more of our
men were going too.
“There now, the Kúrskies have also gone past,” was being said in the ranks.
“It’s wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last night I
looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A regular Moscow!”
Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or talked to the
men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war, were out of humor and
dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not exert themselves to cheer the men but
merely carried out the orders), yet the troops marched gaily, as they always do
when going into action, especially to an attack. But when they had marched for
about an hour in the dense fog, the greater part of the men had to halt and an
unpleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder spread through the
ranks. How such a consciousness is communicated is very difficult to define, but
it certainly is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly, and
irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been alone without
any allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before this consciousness of
mismanagement became a general conviction, but as it was, the disorder was
readily and naturally attributed to the stupid Germans, and everyone was
convinced that a dangerous muddle had been occasioned by the sausage eaters.
“Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
against the French?”
“No, one can’t hear them. They’d be firing if we had.”
“They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in the middle
of a field without rhyme or reason. It’s all those damned Germans’ muddling!
What stupid devils!”
“Yes, I’d send them on in front, but no fear, they’re crowding up behind. And
now here we stand hungry.”
“I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking the way,”
said an officer.
“Ah, those damned Germans! They don’t know their own country!” said
another.
“What division are you?” shouted an adjutant, riding up.
“The Eighteenth.”
“Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you won’t
get there till evening.”
“What stupid orders! They don’t themselves know what they are doing!” said
the officer and rode off.
Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.
“Tafa-lafa! But what he’s jabbering no one can make out,” said a soldier,
mimicking the general who had ridden away. “I’d shoot them, the scoundrels!”
“We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven’t got halfway.
Fine orders!” was being repeated on different sides.
And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to turn into
vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the Germans.
The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was moving
toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center was too far
separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all ordered to turn back to
the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in front of the infantry, who had to
wait.
At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a Russian
general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry should be halted, the
Austrian argued that not he, but the higher command, was to blame. The troops
meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited. After an hour’s delay they at
last moved on, descending the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay
still more densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a shot
was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying intervals—trata...tat—
and then more and more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the Goldbach
Stream began.
Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading through the
ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front or around them in the
thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the enemy lazily and advanced and
again halted, receiving no timely orders from the officers or adjutants who
wandered about in the fog in those unknown surroundings unable to find their
own regiments. In this way the action began for the first, second, and third
columns, which had gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which
Kutúzov was, stood on the Pratzen Heights.
Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; on the higher
ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was going on in front.
Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed, six miles away, or whether
they were near by in that sea of mist, no one knew till after eight o’clock.
It was nine o’clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea down
below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon stood with
his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was a clear blue sky, and
the sun’s vast orb quivered like a huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of
that milky sea of mist. The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with
his staff, were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and
Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and begin the
action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the
naked eye could distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the
blue cloak which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat on his small gray
Arab horse a little in front of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills which
seemed to rise out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were
moving in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the valley. Not a
single muscle of his face—which in those days was still thin—moved. His
gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His predictions were being
justified. Part of the Russian force had already descended into the valley toward
the ponds and lakes and part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he
intended to attack and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist
that in a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one direction
toward the valley and disappearing one after another into the mist. From
information he had received the evening before, from the sound of wheels and
footsteps heard by the outposts during the night, by the disorderly movement of
the Russian columns, and from all indications, he saw clearly that the allies
believed him to be far away in front of them, and that the columns moving near
Pratzen constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was
already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still he did not
begin the engagement.
Today was a great day for him—the anniversary of his coronation. Before
dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and in good spirits,
he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in that happy mood in which
everything seems possible and everything succeeds. He sat motionless, looking
at the heights visible above the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of
confident, self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily
in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his attention. He
looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun floating up out of the mist.
When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and mist were
aglow with dazzling light—as if he had only awaited this to begin the action—he
drew the glove from his shapely white hand, made a sign with it to the marshals,
and ordered the action to begin. The marshals, accompanied by adjutants,
galloped off in different directions, and a few minutes later the chief forces of
the French army moved rapidly toward those Pratzen Heights which were being
more and more denuded by Russian troops moving down the valley to their left.
CHAPTER XV
At eight o’clock Kutúzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth column,
Milorádovich’s, the one that was to take the place of Przebyszéwski’s and
Langeron’s columns which had already gone down into the valley. He greeted
the men of the foremost regiment and gave them the order to march, thereby
indicating that he intended to lead that column himself. When he had reached the
village of Pratzen he halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense
number forming the commander in chief’s suite. He was in a state of suppressed
excitement and irritation, though controlledly calm as a man is at the approach of
a long-awaited moment. He was firmly convinced that this was the day of his
Toulon, or his bridge of Arcola. How it would come about he did not know, but
he felt sure it would do so. The locality and the position of our troops were
known to him as far as they could be known to anyone in our army. His own
strategic plan, which obviously could not now be carried out, was forgotten.
Now, entering into Weyrother’s plan, Prince Andrew considered possible
contingencies and formed new projects such as might call for his rapidity of
perception and decision.
To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen forces could
be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight would concentrate.
“There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,” thought he, “I shall be sent
with a brigade or division, and there, standard in hand, I shall go forward and
break whatever is in front of me.”
He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions. Seeing
them he kept thinking, “That may be the very standard with which I shall lead
the army.”
In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights was a hoar
frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay like a milk-white sea.
Nothing was visible in the valley to the left into which our troops had descended
and from whence came the sounds of firing. Above the heights was the dark
clear sky, and to the right the vast orb of the sun. In front, far off on the farther
shore of that sea of mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there
the enemy probably was, for something could be descried. On the right the
Guards were entering the misty region with a sound of hoofs and wheels and
now and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left beyond the village similar masses
of cavalry came up and disappeared in the sea of mist. In front and behind
moved infantry. The commander in chief was standing at the end of the village
letting the troops pass by him. That morning Kutúzov seemed worn and irritable.
The infantry passing before him came to a halt without any command being
given, apparently obstructed by something in front.
“Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the village!” he
said angrily to a general who had ridden up. “Don’t you understand, your
excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile through narrow village streets
when we are marching against the enemy?”
“I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,” answered
the general.
Kutúzov laughed bitterly.
“You’ll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy! Very fine!”
“The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the dispositions...”
“The dispositions!” exclaimed Kutúzov bitterly. “Who told you that?... Kindly
do as you are ordered.”
“Yes, sir.”
“My dear fellow,” Nesvítski whispered to Prince Andrew, “the old man is as
surly as a dog.”
An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his hat galloped
up to Kutúzov and asked in the Emperor’s name had the fourth column advanced
into action.
Kutúzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to fall upon
Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutúzov’s malevolent and
caustic expression softened, as if admitting that what was being done was not his
adjutant’s fault, and still not answering the Austrian adjutant, he addressed
Bolkónski.
“Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed the village.
Tell it to stop and await my orders.”
Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.
“And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted,” he added. “What are they
doing? What are they doing?” he murmured to himself, still not replying to the
Austrian.
Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.
Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped the third
division and convinced himself that there really were no sharpshooters in front
of our columns. The colonel at the head of the regiment was much surprised at
the commander in chief’s order to throw out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly
sure that there were other troops in front of him and that the enemy must be at
least six miles away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a barren
descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the commander in chief’s
name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew galloped back. Kutúzov still in the
same place, his stout body resting heavily in the saddle with the lassitude of age,
sat yawning wearily with closed eyes. The troops were no longer moving, but
stood with the butts of their muskets on the ground.
“All right, all right!” he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a general who,
watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all the left-flank columns
had already descended.
“Plenty of time, your excellency,” muttered Kutúzov in the midst of a yawn.
“Plenty of time,” he repeated.
Just then at a distance behind Kutúzov was heard the sound of regiments
saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole extended line of the
advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person they were greeting was riding
quickly. When the soldiers of the regiment in front of which Kutúzov was
standing began to shout, he rode a little to one side and looked round with a
frown. Along the road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a squadron of
horsemen in various uniforms. Two of them rode side by side in front, at full
gallop. One in a black uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a bobtailed
chestnut horse, the other who was in a white uniform rode a black one. These
were the two Emperors followed by their suites. Kutúzov, affecting the manners
of an old soldier at the front, gave the command “Attention!” and rode up to the
Emperors with a salute. His whole appearance and manner were suddenly
transformed. He put on the air of a subordinate who obeys without reasoning.
With an affectation of respect which evidently struck Alexander unpleasantly, he
rode up and saluted.
This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy face of
the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and vanished. After his
illness he looked rather thinner that day than on the field of Olmütz where
Bolkónski had seen him for the first time abroad, but there was still the same
bewitching combination of majesty and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on
his delicate lips the same capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent
appearance of goodhearted innocent youth.
At the Olmütz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed brighter
and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping two miles, and
reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked round at the faces of his suite,
young and animated as his own. Czartorýski, Novosíltsev, Prince Volkónsky,
Strógonov, and the others, all richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-
groomed, fresh, only slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling,
had stopped behind the Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced young
man, sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking about him in a
leisurely and preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his white adjutants and
asked some question—“Most likely he is asking at what o’clock they started,”
thought Prince Andrew, watching his old acquaintance with a smile he could not
repress as he recalled his reception at Brünn. In the Emperors’ suite were the
picked young orderly officers of the Guard and line regiments, Russian and
Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the Tsar’s beautiful relay horses
covered with embroidered cloths.
As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields enters a stuffy
room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and confidence of success reached
Kutúzov’s cheerless staff with the galloping advent of all these brilliant young
men.
“Why aren’t you beginning, Michael Ilariónovich?” said the Emperor
Alexander hurriedly to Kutúzov, glancing courteously at the same time at the
Emperor Francis.
“I am waiting, Your Majesty,” answered Kutúzov, bending forward
respectfully.
The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had not quite
heard.
“Waiting, Your Majesty,” repeated Kutúzov. (Prince Andrew noted that
Kutúzov’s upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word “waiting.”) “Not
all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty.”
The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his rather
round shoulders and glanced at Novosíltsev who was near him, as if complaining
of Kutúzov.
“You know, Michael Ilariónovich, we are not on the Empress’ Field where a
parade does not begin till all the troops are assembled,” said the Tsar with
another glance at the Emperor Francis, as if inviting him if not to join in at least
to listen to what he was saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about
him and did not listen.
“That is just why I do not begin, sire,” said Kutúzov in a resounding voice,
apparently to preclude the possibility of not being heard, and again something in
his face twitched—“That is just why I do not begin, sire, because we are not on
parade and not on the Empress’ Field,” said he clearly and distinctly.
In the Emperor’s suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed dissatisfaction
and reproach. “Old though he may be, he should not, he certainly should not,
speak like that,” their glances seemed to say.
The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutúzov’s eye waiting to hear
whether he would say anything more. But Kutúzov, with respectfully bowed
head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence lasted for about a minute.
“However, if you command it, Your Majesty,” said Kutúzov, lifting his head
and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning, but submissive
general.
He touched his horse and having called Milorádovich, the commander of the
column, gave him the order to advance.
The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Nóvgorod and one
of the Ápsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.
As this Ápsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Milorádovich, without
his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous tuft of plumes in his
cocked hat worn on one side with its corners front and back, galloped
strenuously forward, and with a dashing salute reined in his horse before the
Emperor.
“God be with you, general!” said the Emperor.
“Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilité, sire,” * he
answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among the gentlemen of the
Tsar’s suite by his poor French.
* “Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to
do, Sire.”
Milorádovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a little behind
the Emperor. The Ápsheron men, excited by the Tsar’s presence, passed in step
before the Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk pace.
“Lads!” shouted Milorádovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery voice,
obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect of battle, and by the
sight of the gallant Ápsherons, his comrades in Suvórov’s time, now passing so
gallantly before the Emperors, that he forgot the sovereigns’ presence. “Lads, it’s
not the first village you’ve had to take,” cried he.
“Glad to do our best!” shouted the soldiers.
The Emperor’s horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had carried the
sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the field of Austerlitz,
enduring the heedless blows of his left foot and pricking its ears at the sound of
shots just as it had done on the Empress’ Field, not understanding the
significance of the firing, nor of the nearness of the Emperor Francis’ black cob,
nor of all that was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.
The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a remark to
him, pointing to the gallant Ápsherons.
CHAPTER XVI
Kutúzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind the
carabineers.
When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column he stopped at
a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been an inn, where two roads
parted. Both of them led downhill and troops were marching along both.
The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly visible about
a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down below, on the left, the firing
became more distinct. Kutúzov had stopped and was speaking to an Austrian
general. Prince Andrew, who was a little behind looking at them, turned to an
adjutant to ask him for a field glass.
“Look, look!” said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the distance, but
down the hill before him. “It’s the French!”
The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass, trying to snatch
it from one another. The expression on all their faces suddenly changed to one of
horror. The French were supposed to be a mile and a half away, but had suddenly
and unexpectedly appeared just in front of us.
“It’s the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But how is that?” said
different voices.
With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not more than
five hundred paces from where Kutúzov was standing, a dense French column
coming up to meet the Ápsherons.
“Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,” thought
Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutúzov.
“The Ápsherons must be stopped, your excellency,” cried he. But at that very
instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was heard quite close at hand,
and a voice of naïve terror barely two steps from Prince Andrew shouted,
“Brothers! All’s lost!” And at this as if at a command, everyone began to run.
Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where five
minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would it have been
difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible not to be carried back with it
oneself. Bolkónski only tried not to lose touch with it, and looked around
bewildered and unable to grasp what was happening in front of him. Nesvítski
with an angry face, red and unlike himself, was shouting to Kutúzov that if he
did not ride away at once he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutúzov
remained in the same place and without answering drew out a handkerchief.
Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced his way to him.
“You are wounded?” he asked, hardly able to master the trembling of his
lower jaw.
“The wound is not here, it is there!” said Kutúzov, pressing the handkerchief
to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing soldiers. “Stop them!” he
shouted, and at the same moment, probably realizing that it was impossible to
stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the right.
A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.
The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by them it
was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, “Get on! Why are you
hindering us?” Another in the same place turned round and fired in the air; a
third was striking the horse Kutúzov himself rode. Having by a great effort got
away to the left from that flood of men, Kutúzov, with his suite diminished by
more than half, rode toward a sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his
way out of the crowd of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutúzov,
saw on the slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was still firing
and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some Russian infantry,
neither moving forward to protect the battery nor backward with the fleeing
crowd. A mounted general separated himself from the infantry and approached
Kutúzov. Of Kutúzov’s suite only four remained. They were all pale and
exchanged looks in silence.
“Stop those wretches!” gasped Kutúzov to the regimental commander,
pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to punish him for those
words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment and across Kutúzov’s suite like a
flock of little birds.
The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutúzov, were firing at him.
After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his leg; several soldiers
fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding the flag let it fall from his hands. It
swayed and fell, but caught on the muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers
started firing without orders.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” groaned Kutúzov despairingly and looked around....
“Bolkónski!” he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of the
feebleness of age, “Bolkónski!” he whispered, pointing to the disordered
battalion and at the enemy, “what’s that?”
But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of shame
and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and run to the standard.
“Forward, lads!” he shouted in a voice piercing as a child’s.
“Here it is!” thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and hearing with
pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him. Several soldiers fell.
“Hurrah!” shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the heavy
standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole battalion would
follow him.
And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then another
and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting “Hurrah!” and overtook him.
A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag that was swaying from its
weight in Prince Andrew’s hands, but he was immediately killed. Prince Andrew
again seized the standard and, dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion.
In front he saw our artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others,
having abandoned their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French
infantry soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning the guns
round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within twenty paces of the
cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above him unceasingly and to right and
left of him soldiers continually groaned and dropped. But he did not look at
them: he looked only at what was going on in front of him—at the battery. He
now saw clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry,
pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other. He could
distinctly see the distraught yet angry expression on the faces of these two men,
who evidently did not realize what they were doing.
“What are they about?” thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them. “Why
doesn’t the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why doesn’t the
Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the Frenchman remembers his
bayonet and stabs him....”
And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to the struggling
men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had triumphantly secured the
mop and still did not realize what awaited him, was about to be decided. But
Prince Andrew did not see how it ended. It seemed to him as though one of the
soldiers near him hit him on the head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a
little, but the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his seeing
what he had been looking at.
“What’s this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way,” thought he, and fell on
his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the Frenchmen
with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner had been killed or not
and whether the cannon had been captured or saved. But he saw nothing. Above
him there was now nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear yet still
immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds gliding slowly across it. “How quiet,
peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I ran,” thought Prince Andrew—“not as we
ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with
frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those
clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky
before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all
falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it
does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!...”
CHAPTER XVII
On our right flank commanded by Bagratión, at nine o’clock the battle had not
yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorúkov’s demand to commence the
action, and wishing to avert responsibility from himself, Prince Bagratión
proposed to Dolgorúkov to send to inquire of the commander in chief. Bagratión
knew that as the distance between the two flanks was more than six miles, even
if the messenger were not killed (which he very likely would be), and found the
commander in chief (which would be very difficult), he would not be able to get
back before evening.
Bagratión cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his suite, and the
boyish face Rostóv, breathless with excitement and hope, was the first to catch
his eye. He sent him.
“And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in chief, your
excellency?” said Rostóv, with his hand to his cap.
“You can give the message to His Majesty,” said Dolgorúkov, hurriedly
interrupting Bagratión.
On being relieved from picket duty Rostóv had managed to get a few hours’
sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute, with elasticity of
movement, faith in his good fortune, and generally in that state of mind which
makes everything seem possible, pleasant, and easy.
All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be a general
engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he was orderly to the
bravest general, and still more, he was going with a message to Kutúzov, perhaps
even to the sovereign himself. The morning was bright, he had a good horse
under him, and his heart was full of joy and happiness. On receiving the order he
gave his horse the rein and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the line
of Bagratión’s troops, which had not yet advanced into action but were standing
motionless; then he came to the region occupied by Uvárov’s cavalry and here
he noticed a stir and signs of preparation for battle; having passed Uvárov’s
cavalry he clearly heard the sound of cannon and musketry ahead of him. The
firing grew louder and louder.
In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket shots at
irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two cannon shots, but a roll of
volleys of musketry from the slopes of the hill before Pratzen, interrupted by
such frequent reports of cannon that sometimes several of them were not
separated from one another but merged into a general roar.
He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one another down
the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling, spreading, and mingling with
one another. He could also, by the gleam of bayonets visible through the smoke,
make out moving masses of infantry and narrow lines of artillery with green
caissons.
Rostóv stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was going on,
but strain his attention as he would he could not understand or make out
anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men of some sort were
moving about, in front and behind moved lines of troops; but why, whither, and
who they were, it was impossible to make out. These sights and sounds had no
depressing or intimidating effect on him; on the contrary, they stimulated his
energy and determination.
“Go on! Go on! Give it them!” he mentally exclaimed at these sounds, and
again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther and farther into the
region where the army was already in action.
“How it will be there I don’t know, but all will be well!” thought Rostóv.
After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part of the line
(the Guards) was already in action.
“So much the better! I shall see it close,” he thought.
He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came galloping
toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered ranks were returning
from the attack. Rostóv got out of their way, involuntarily noticed that one of
them was bleeding, and galloped on.
“That is no business of mine,” he thought. He had not ridden many hundred
yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole width of the field, an
enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white uniforms, mounted on black horses,
trotting straight toward him and across his path. Rostóv put his horse to full
gallop to get out of the way of these men, and he would have got clear had they
continued at the same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of
the horses were already galloping. Rostóv heard the thud of their hoofs and the
jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their figures, and even their faces,
more and more distinctly. They were our Horse Guards, advancing to attack the
French cavalry that was coming to meet them.
The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their horses. Rostóv
could already see their faces and heard the command: “Charge!” shouted by an
officer who was urging his thoroughbred to full speed. Rostóv, fearing to be
crushed or swept into the attack on the French, galloped along the front as hard
as his horse could go, but still was not in time to avoid them.
The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned angrily on
seeing Rostóv before him, with whom he would inevitably collide. This
Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostóv and his Bedouin over (Rostóv
felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic men and horses) had
it not occurred to Rostóv to flourish his whip before the eyes of the Guardsman’s
horse. The heavy black horse, sixteen hands high, shied, throwing back its ears;
but the pockmarked Guardsman drove his huge spurs in violently, and the horse,
flourishing its tail and extending its neck, galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the
Horse Guards passed Rostóv before he heard them shout, “Hurrah!” and looking
back saw that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry
with red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for immediately
afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke enveloped
everything.
At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, disappeared in the
smoke, Rostóv hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go where he was sent.
This was the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that amazed the French
themselves. Rostóv was horrified to hear later that of all that mass of huge and
handsome men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had
galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left after
the charge.
“Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall see the
Emperor immediately!” thought Rostóv and galloped on.
When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them and
around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so much
because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on the soldiers’ faces
and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the officers.
Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he heard a voice
calling him by name.
“Rostóv!”
“What?” he answered, not recognizing Borís.
“I say, we’ve been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!” said Borís with
the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been under fire for the
first time.
Rostóv stopped.
“Have you?” he said. “Well, how did it go?”
“We drove them back!” said Borís with animation, growing talkative. “Can
you imagine it?” and he began describing how the Guards, having taken up their
position and seeing troops before them, thought they were Austrians, and all at
once discovered from the cannon balls discharged by those troops that they were
themselves in the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostóv
without hearing Borís to the end spurred his horse.
“Where are you off to?” asked Borís.
“With a message to His Majesty.”
“There he is!” said Borís, thinking Rostóv had said “His Highness,” and
pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high shoulders and frowning brows
stood a hundred paces away from them in his helmet and Horse Guards’ jacket,
shouting something to a pale, white uniformed Austrian officer.
“But that’s the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
Emperor,” said Rostóv, and was about to spur his horse.
“Count! Count!” shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager as
Borís. “Count! I am wounded in my right hand” (and he showed his bleeding
hand with a handkerchief tied round it) “and I remained at the front. I held my
sword in my left hand, Count. All our family—the von Bergs—have been
knights!”
He said something more, but Rostóv did not wait to hear it and rode away.
Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostóv, to avoid
again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the Horse Guards
charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round the place where the
hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. Suddenly he heard musket fire
quite close in front of him and behind our troops, where he could never have
expected the enemy to be.
“What can it be?” he thought. “The enemy in the rear of our army?
Impossible!” And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself and for
the issue of the whole battle. “But be that what it may,” he reflected, “there is no
riding round it now. I must look for the commander in chief here, and if all is lost
it is for me to perish with the rest.”
The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostóv was more and
more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the village of Pratzen,
which was full of troops of all kinds.
“What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is firing?”
Rostóv kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian soldiers running in
confused crowds across his path.
“The devil knows! They’ve killed everybody! It’s all up now!” he was told in
Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who understood what
was happening as little as he did.
“Kill the Germans!” shouted one.
“May the devil take them—the traitors!”
“Zum Henker diese Russen!” * muttered a German.
* “Hang these Russians!”
Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse, screams,
and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing died down. Rostóv
learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing at one another.
“My God! What does it all mean?” thought he. “And here, where at any
moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a handful of
scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can’t be that, it can’t be! Only to get past them
quicker, quicker!”
The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostóv’s head. Though he saw
French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights just where he had been
ordered to look for the commander in chief, he could not, did not wish to,
believe that.
CHAPTER XVIII
Rostóv had been ordered to look for Kutúzov and the Emperor near the village
of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer were there, only
disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He urged on his already weary
horse to get quickly past these crowds, but the farther he went the more
disorganized they were. The highroad on which he had come out was thronged
with calèches, carriages of all sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all
arms, some wounded and some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in
confusion under the dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French
batteries stationed on the Pratzen Heights.
“Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutúzov?” Rostóv kept asking everyone he
could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.
“Eh, brother! They’ve all bolted long ago!” said the soldier, laughing for some
reason and shaking himself free.
Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostóv stopped the horse of
a batman or groom of some important personage and began to question him. The
man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a carriage at full speed about an
hour before along that very road and that he was dangerously wounded.
“It can’t be!” said Rostóv. “It must have been someone else.”
“I saw him myself,” replied the man with a self-confident smile of derision. “I
ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I’ve seen him in Petersburg. I
saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in the carriage as pale as anything. How
they made the four black horses fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It’s time I
knew the Imperial horses and Ilyá Iványch. I don’t think Ilyá drives anyone
except the Tsar!”
Rostóv let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded officer
passing by addressed him:
“Who is it you want?” he asked. “The commander in chief? He was killed by
a cannon ball—struck in the breast before our regiment.”
“Not killed—wounded!” another officer corrected him.
“Who? Kutúzov?” asked Rostóv.
“Not Kutúzov, but what’s his name—well, never mind... there are not many
left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders are there,” said the
officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek, and he walked on.
Rostóv rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now going.
The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to doubt it now.
Rostóv rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which he saw turrets and a
church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say to the Tsar or to Kutúzov,
even if they were alive and unwounded?
“Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!” a soldier
shouted to him. “They’d kill you there!”
“Oh, what are you talking about?” said another. “Where is he to go? That way
is nearer.”
Rostóv considered, and then went in the direction where they said he would be
killed.
“It’s all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to save myself?”
he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest number of men had
perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not yet occupied that region,
and the Russians—the uninjured and slightly wounded—had left it long ago. All
about the field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to
fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The wounded crept together
in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing screams and groans,
sometimes feigned—or so it seemed to Rostóv. He put his horse to a trot to avoid
seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid—afraid not for his life, but for
the courage he needed and which he knew would not stand the sight of these
unfortunates.
The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and wounded
where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant riding over it trained
a gun on him and fired several shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling
sounds and of the corpses around him merged in Rostóv’s mind into a single
feeling of terror and pity for himself. He remembered his mother’s last letter.
“What would she feel,” thought he, “if she saw me here now on this field with
the cannon aimed at me?”
In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from the field
of battle, who though still in some confusion were less disordered. The French
cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire sounded far away. Here
everyone clearly saw and said that the battle was lost. No one whom Rostóv
asked could tell him where the Emperor or Kutúzov was. Some said the report
that the Emperor was wounded was correct, others that it was not, and explained
the false rumor that had spread by the fact that the Emperor’s carriage had really
galloped from the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal
Count Tolstóy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in the Emperor’s
suite. One officer told Rostóv that he had seen someone from headquarters
behind the village to the left, and thither Rostóv rode, not hoping to find anyone
but merely to ease his conscience. When he had ridden about two miles and had
passed the last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch
round it, two men on horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his
hat seemed familiar to Rostóv; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which
Rostóv fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse with his
spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a little earth crumbled from
the bank under the horse’s hind hoofs. Turning the horse sharply, he again
jumped the ditch, and deferentially addressed the horseman with the white
plumes, evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose figure
seemed familiar to Rostóv and involuntarily riveted his attention, made a gesture
of refusal with his head and hand and by that gesture Rostóv instantly
recognized his lamented and adored monarch.
“But it can’t be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!” thought Rostóv. At
that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostóv saw the beloved features that
were so deeply engraved on his memory. The Emperor was pale, his cheeks
sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm, the mildness of his features, was all
the greater. Rostóv was happy in the assurance that the rumors about the
Emperor being wounded were false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew
that he might and even ought to go straight to him and give the message
Dolgorúkov had ordered him to deliver.
But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the thoughts
he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a chance of delay and
flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is alone with her, so Rostóv,
now that he had attained what he had longed for more than anything else in the
world, did not know how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons
occurred to him why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do
so.
“What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of his being alone
and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or painful to him at this
moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him now, when my heart fails me
and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight of him?” Not one of the innumerable
speeches addressed to the Emperor that he had composed in his imagination
could he now recall. Those speeches were intended for quite other conditions,
they were for the most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph,
generally when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for
heroic deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.
“Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right flank
now that it is nearly four o’clock and the battle is lost? No, certainly I must not
approach him, I must not intrude on his reflections. Better die a thousand times
than risk receiving an unkind look or bad opinion from him,” Rostóv decided;
and sorrowfully and with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking
back at the Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.
While Rostóv was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away, Captain
von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the Emperor at once rode
up to him, offered his services, and assisted him to cross the ditch on foot. The
Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling unwell, sat down under an apple tree and
von Toll remained beside him. Rostóv from a distance saw with envy and
remorse how von Toll spoke long and warmly to the Emperor and how the
Emperor, evidently weeping, covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von
Toll’s hand.
“And I might have been in his place!” thought Rostóv, and hardly restraining
his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter despair, not knowing where
to or why he was now riding.
His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was the
cause of his grief.
He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign. It was a
unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had not made use of
it.... “What have I done?” thought he. And he turned round and galloped back to
the place where he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one beyond the ditch
now. Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one of the drivers he
learned that Kutúzov’s staff were not far off, in the village the vehicles were
going to. Rostóv followed them. In front of him walked Kutúzov’s groom
leading horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,
bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.
“Tit! I say, Tit!” said the groom.
“What?” answered the old man absent-mindedly.
“Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!”
“Oh, you fool!” said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed in
silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More than a
hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.
Przebyszéwski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns after
losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused masses.
The remains of Langeron’s and Dokhtúrov’s mingled forces were crowding
around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of Augesd.
After five o’clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade
(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous batteries
ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our retreating forces.
In the rearguard, Dokhtúrov and others rallying some battalions kept up a
musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It was growing
dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the old miller had
been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully angling, while his
grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the
watering can, on that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy
caps and blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with
wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts—on that narrow
dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses’ hoofs and between the
wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together, crushing
one another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing one another, only to
move on a few steps and be killed themselves in the same way.
Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, or a shell
burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and splashing with blood
those near them.
Dólokhov—now an officer—wounded in the arm, and on foot, with the
regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the crowd, they
had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in on all sides, had
stopped because a horse in front had fallen under a cannon and the crowd were
dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front
and splashed Dólokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing forward desperately,
squeezed together, moved a few steps, and again stopped.
“Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here another
two minutes and it is certain death,” thought each one.
Dólokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the edge of the
dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto the slippery ice that
covered the millpool.
“Turn this way!” he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked under him;
“turn this way!” he shouted to those with the gun. “It bears!...”
The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it would
give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon even under his
weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to the bank, hesitating to step
onto the ice. The general on horseback at the entrance to the dam raised his hand
and opened his mouth to address Dólokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so
low above the crowd that everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and
the general fell from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or
thought of raising him.
“Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don’t you hear? Go on!”
innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the general, the
men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were shouting.
One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto the ice.
Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen pond. The ice
gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg slipped into the water.
He tried to right himself but fell in up to his waist. The nearest soldiers shrank
back, the gun driver stopped his horse, but from behind still came the shouts:
“Onto the ice, why do you stop? Go on! Go on!” And cries of horror were heard
in the crowd. The soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to
make them turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had
held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty men who
were on it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning one another.
Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop onto the ice and
into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd that covered the dam, the
pond, and the bank.
CHAPTER XIX
On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his hand, lay
Prince Andrew Bolkónski bleeding profusely and unconsciously uttering a
gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.
Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not know
how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt that he was alive
and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.
“Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw today?” was
his first thought. “And I did not know this suffering either,” he thought. “Yes, I
did not know anything, anything at all till now. But where am I?”
He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices speaking
French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same lofty sky with
clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, and between them gleamed
blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did not see those who, judging by the
sound of hoofs and voices, had ridden up and stopped near him.
It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding over
the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the batteries firing at the
Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and wounded left on the field.
“Fine men!” remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier, who,
with his face buried in the ground and a blackened nape, lay on his stomach with
an already stiffened arm flung wide.
“The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your Majesty,” said an
adjutant who had come from the batteries that were firing at Augesd.
“Have some brought from the reserve,” said Napoleon, and having gone on a
few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back with the
flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had already been taken by
the French as a trophy.)
“That’s a fine death!” said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkónski.
Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was Napoleon
who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he heard the words as he
might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only did they not interest him, but he
took no notice of them and at once forgot them. His head was burning, he felt
himself bleeding to death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and
everlasting sky. He knew it was Napoleon—his hero—but at that moment
Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with
what was passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the
clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be
standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only glad that people were
standing near him and only wished that they would help him and bring him back
to life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had today learned to
understand it so differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and utter a
sound. He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan which aroused
his own pity.
“Ah! He is alive,” said Napoleon. “Lift this young man up and carry him to
the dressing station.”
Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who, hat in hand,
rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the victory.
Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from the
terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting while being moved, and
the probing of his wound at the dressing station. He did not regain consciousness
till late in the day, when with other wounded and captured Russian officers he
was carried to the hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was
able to look about him and even speak.
The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a French
convoy officer, who said rapidly: “We must halt here: the Emperor will pass here
immediately; it will please him to see these gentlemen prisoners.”
“There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army, that he is
probably tired of them,” said another officer.
“All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
Alexander’s Guards,” said the first one, indicating a Russian officer in the white
uniform of the Horse Guards.
Bolkónski recognized Prince Repnín whom he had met in Petersburg society.
Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of the Horse Guards.
Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.
“Which is the senior?” he asked, on seeing the prisoners.
They named the colonel, Prince Repnín.
“You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander’s regiment of Horse
Guards?” asked Napoleon.
“I commanded a squadron,” replied Repnín.
“Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably,” said Napoleon.
“The praise of a great commander is a soldier’s highest reward,” said Repnín.
“I bestow it with pleasure,” said Napoleon. “And who is that young man
beside you?”
Prince Repnín named Lieutenant Sukhtélen.
After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
“He’s very young to come to meddle with us.”
“Youth is no hindrance to courage,” muttered Sukhtélen in a failing voice.
“A splendid reply!” said Napoleon. “Young man, you will go far!”
Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the Emperor’s eyes
to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his attention.
Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield and, addressing
him, again used the epithet “young man” that was connected in his memory with
Prince Andrew.
“Well, and you, young man,” said he. “How do you feel, mon brave?”
Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few words
to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed straight on
Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that moment seemed to him all the
interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his hero himself with his paltry
vanity and joy in victory appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky
which he had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.
Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the stern and
solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood, suffering, and the
nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrew
thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one
could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of
which no one alive could understand or explain.
The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to one of
the officers as he went: “Have these gentlemen attended to and taken to my
bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their wounds. Au revoir, Prince
Repnín!” and he spurred his horse and galloped away.
His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.
The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the little
gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother’s neck, but seeing the favor
the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now hastened to return the holy image.
Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the little
icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his chest outside his
uniform.
“It would be good,” thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon his sister had
hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, “it would be good if
everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Mary. How good it would be
to know where to seek for help in this life, and what to expect after it beyond the
grave! How happy and calm I should be if I could now say: ‘Lord, have mercy
on me!’... But to whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable,
incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which I cannot even
express in words—the Great All or Nothing-” said he to himself, “or to that God
who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing certain, nothing
at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and the greatness of
something incomprehensible but all-important.”
The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable pain; his
feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his father, wife, sister,
and future son, and the tenderness he had felt the night before the battle, the
figure of the insignificant little Napoleon, and above all this the lofty sky, formed
the chief subjects of his delirious fancies.
The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented itself to
him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little Napoleon had
suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of shortsighted delight at the
misery of others, and doubts and torments had followed, and only the heavens
promised peace. Toward morning all these dreams melted and merged into the
chaos and darkness of unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of
Napoleon’s doctor, Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in
convalescence.
“He is a nervous, bilious subject,” said Larrey, “and will not recover.”
And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care of the
inhabitants of the district.
BOOK FOUR: 1806
CHAPTER I
Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostóv returned home on leave. Denísov was
going home to Vorónezh and Rostóv persuaded him to travel with him as far as
Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a comrade at the last post station
but one before Moscow, Denísov had drunk three bottles of wine with him and,
despite the jolting ruts across the snow-covered road, did not once wake up on
the way to Moscow, but lay at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostóv, who grew
more and more impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.
“How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets, shops,
bakers’ signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!” thought Rostóv, when their leave
permits had been passed at the town gate and they had entered Moscow.
“Denísov! We’re here! He’s asleep,” he added, leaning forward with his whole
body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed of the sleigh.
Denísov gave no answer.
“There’s the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhár, has his
stand, and there’s Zakhár himself and still the same horse! And here’s the little
shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can’t you hurry up? Now then!”
“Which house is it?” asked the driver.
“Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don’t you see? That’s our
house,” said Rostóv. “Of course, it’s our house! Denísov, Denísov! We’re almost
there!”
Denísov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.
“Dmítri,” said Rostóv to his valet on the box, “those lights are in our house,
aren’t they?”
“Yes, sir, and there’s a light in your father’s study.”
“Then they’ve not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now, don’t
forget to put out my new coat,” added Rostóv, fingering his new mustache.
“Now then, get on,” he shouted to the driver. “Do wake up, Váska!” he went on,
turning to Denísov, whose head was again nodding. “Come, get on! You shall
have three rubles for vodka—get on!” Rostóv shouted, when the sleigh was only
three houses from his door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at all.
At last the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostóv saw
overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off, the porch, and
the post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out before the sleigh stopped,
and ran into the hall. The house stood cold and silent, as if quite regardless of
who had come to it. There was no one in the hall. “Oh God! Is everyone all
right?” he thought, stopping for a moment with a sinking heart, and then
immediately starting to run along the hall and up the warped steps of the familiar
staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always angered the countess
when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely as ever. A solitary tallow
candle burned in the anteroom.
Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokófy, the footman, who was so strong
that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat plaiting slippers out of
cloth selvedges. He looked up at the opening door and his expression of sleepy
indifference suddenly changed to one of delighted amazement.
“Gracious heavens! The young count!” he cried, recognizing his young
master. “Can it be? My treasure!” and Prokófy, trembling with excitement,
rushed toward the drawing room door, probably in order to announce him, but,
changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss the young man’s shoulder.
“All well?” asked Rostóv, drawing away his arm.
“Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They’ve just finished supper. Let me have a look
at you, your excellency.”
“Is everything quite all right?”
“The Lord be thanked, yes!”
Rostóv, who had completely forgotten Denísov, not wishing anyone to
forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the large dark
ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card tables and the same
chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had already seen the young master,
and, before he had reached the drawing room, something flew out from a side
door like a tornado and began hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another
creature of the same kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging,
more kissing, more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish which
was Papa, which Natásha, and which Pétya. Everyone shouted, talked, and
kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not there, he noticed that.
“And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!...”
“Here he is... our own... Kólya, * dear fellow... How he has changed!... Where
are the candles?... Tea!...”
* Nicholas.
and Count Rostóv, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading his
verses, bowed to Bagratión. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was more
important than verses, and Bagratión, again preceding all the rest, went in to
dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between two Alexanders—
Bekleshëv and Narýshkin—which was a significant allusion to the name of the
sovereign. Three hundred persons took their seats in the dining room, according
to their rank and importance: the more important nearer to the honored guest, as
naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest.
Just before dinner, Count Ilyá Rostóv presented his son to Bagratión, who
recognized him and said a few words to him, disjointed and awkward, as were
all the words he spoke that day, and Count Ilyá looked joyfully and proudly
around while Bagratión spoke to his son.
Nicholas Rostóv, with Denísov and his new acquaintance, Dólokhov, sat
almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre, beside Prince Nesvítski.
Count Ilyá Rostóv with the other members of the committee sat facing Bagratión
and, as the very personification of Moscow hospitality, did the honors to the
prince.
His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and the other
fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till the end of the meal. He
winked at the butler, whispered directions to the footmen, and awaited each
expected dish with some anxiety. Everything was excellent. With the second
course, a gigantic sterlet (at sight of which Ilyá Rostóv blushed with self-
conscious pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne
glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, the count exchanged
glances with the other committeemen. “There will be many toasts, it’s time to
begin,” he whispered, and taking up his glass, he rose. All were silent, waiting
for what he would say.
“To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!” he cried, and at the same
moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and enthusiasm. The band
immediately struck up “Conquest’s joyful thunder waken...” All rose and cried
“Hurrah!” Bagratión also rose and shouted “Hurrah!” in exactly the same voice
in which he had shouted it on the field at Schön Grabern. Young Rostóv’s
ecstatic voice could be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept.
“To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!” he roared, “Hurrah!” and
emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many followed his
example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time. When the voices
subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass and everybody sat down
again, smiling at the noise they had made and exchanging remarks. The old
count rose once more, glanced at a note lying beside his plate, and proposed a
toast, “To the health of the hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivánovich
Bagratión!” and again his blue eyes grew moist. “Hurrah!” cried the three
hundred voices again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a cantata
composed by Paul Ivánovich Kutúzov:
Russians! O’er all barriers on!
Courage conquest guarantees;
Have we not Bagratión?
He brings foemen to their knees,... etc.
As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was proposed and
Count Ilyá Rostóv became more and more moved, more glass was smashed, and
the shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshëv, Narýshkin, Uvárov,
Dolgorúkov, Apráksin, Valúev, to the committee, to all the club members and to
all the club guests, and finally to Count Ilyá Rostóv separately, as the organizer
of the banquet. At that toast, the count took out his handkerchief and, covering
his face, wept outright.
CHAPTER IV
Pierre sat opposite Dólokhov and Nicholas Rostóv. As usual, he ate and drank
much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed that some great
change had come over him that day. He was silent all through dinner and looked
about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed eyes and a look of complete absent-
mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge of his nose. His face was depressed and
gloomy. He seemed to see and hear nothing of what was going on around him
and to be absorbed by some depressing and unsolved problem.
The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by the
princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dólokhov’s intimacy with his wife,
and by an anonymous letter he had received that morning, which in the mean
jocular way common to anonymous letters said that he saw badly through his
spectacles, but that his wife’s connection with Dólokhov was a secret to no one
but himself. Pierre absolutely disbelieved both the princess’ hints and the letter,
but he feared now to look at Dólokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every
time he chanced to meet Dólokhov’s handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt
something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly away.
Involuntarily recalling his wife’s past and her relations with Dólokhov, Pierre
saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be true, or might at least seem
to be true had it not referred to his wife. He involuntarily remembered how
Dólokhov, who had fully recovered his former position after the campaign, had
returned to Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself of his friendly
relations with Pierre as a boon companion, Dólokhov had come straight to his
house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled how
Hélène had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dólokhov’s living at their house,
and how cynically Dólokhov had praised his wife’s beauty to him and from that
time till they came to Moscow had not left them for a day.
“Yes, he is very handsome,” thought Pierre, “and I know him. It would be
particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule me, just because I
have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended him, and helped him. I know and
understand what a spice that would add to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it
really were true. Yes, if it were true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to,
and can’t, believe it.” He remembered the expression Dólokhov’s face assumed
in his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping
them into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel without any reason,
or shot a post-boy’s horse with a pistol. That expression was often on
Dólokhov’s face when looking at him. “Yes, he is a bully,” thought Pierre, “to
kill a man means nothing to him. It must seem to him that everyone is afraid of
him, and that must please him. He must think that I, too, am afraid of him—and
in fact I am afraid of him,” he thought, and again he felt something terrible and
monstrous rising in his soul. Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv were now sitting
opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostóv was talking merrily to his two
friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the other a notorious duelist and
rake, and every now and then he glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied,
absent-minded, and massive figure was a very noticeable one at the dinner.
Rostóv looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre appeared to his hussar
eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a word—an old woman;
and secondly because Pierre in his preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not
recognized Rostóv and had not responded to his greeting. When the Emperor’s
health was drunk, Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.
“What are you about?” shouted Rostóv, looking at him in an ecstasy of
exasperation. “Don’t you hear it’s His Majesty the Emperor’s health?”
Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting till all were
seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostóv.
“Why, I didn’t recognize you!” he said. But Rostóv was otherwise engaged;
he was shouting “Hurrah!”
“Why don’t you renew the acquaintance?” said Dólokhov to Rostóv.
“Confound him, he’s a fool!” said Rostóv.
“One should make up to the husbands of pretty women,” said Denísov.
Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were talking about
him. He reddened and turned away.
“Well, now to the health of handsome women!” said Dólokhov, and with a
serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth, he
turned with his glass to Pierre.
“Here’s to the health of lovely women, Peterkin—and their lovers!” he added.
Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking at
Dólokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing leaflets with
Kutúzov’s cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of the principal guests. He was
just going to take it when Dólokhov, leaning across, snatched it from his hand
and began reading it. Pierre looked at Dólokhov and his eyes dropped, the
something terrible and monstrous that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and
took possession of him. He leaned his whole massive body across the table.
“How dare you take it?” he shouted.
Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvítski and the
neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezúkhov.
“Don’t! Don’t! What are you about?” whispered their frightened voices.
Dólokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that smile of
his which seemed to say, “Ah! This is what I like!”
“You shan’t have it!” he said distinctly.
Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
“You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!” he ejaculated, and, pushing back
his chair, he rose from the table.
At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt that the
question of his wife’s guilt which had been tormenting him the whole day was
finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative. He hated her and was
forever sundered from her. Despite Denísov’s request that he would take no part
in the matter, Rostóv agreed to be Dólokhov’s second, and after dinner he
discussed the arrangements for the duel with Nesvítski, Bezúkhov’s second.
Pierre went home, but Rostóv with Dólokhov and Denísov stayed on at the club
till late, listening to the gypsies and other singers.
“Well then, till tomorrow at Sokólniki,” said Dólokhov, as he took leave of
Rostóv in the club porch.
“And do you feel quite calm?” Rostóv asked.
Dólokhov paused.
“Well, you see, I’ll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two words. If you
are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write affectionate letters to
your parents, and if you think you may be killed, you are a fool and are lost for
certain. But go with the firm intention of killing your man as quickly and surely
as possible, and then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostromá used to
tell me. ‘Everyone fears a bear,’ he says, ‘but when you see one your fear’s all
gone, and your only thought is not to let him get away!’ And that’s how it is with
me. À demain, mon cher.” *
* Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvítski drove to the Sokólniki
forest and found Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv already there. Pierre had the air
of a man preoccupied with considerations which had no connection with the
matter in hand. His haggard face was yellow. He had evidently not slept that
night. He looked about distractedly and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the
sun. He was entirely absorbed by two considerations: his wife’s guilt, of which
after his sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt, and the guiltlessness of
Dólokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor of a man who was nothing
to him.... “I should perhaps have done the same thing in his place,” thought
Pierre. “It’s even certain that I should have done the same, then why this duel,
this murder? Either I shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or
knee. Can’t I go away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?” passed
through his mind. But just at moments when such thoughts occurred to him, he
would ask in a particularly calm and absent-minded way, which inspired the
respect of the onlookers, “Will it be long? Are things ready?”
When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the barriers, and the
pistols loaded, Nesvítski went up to Pierre.
“I should not be doing my duty, Count,” he said in timid tones, “and should
not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in choosing me for
your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment I did not tell you the whole
truth. I think there is no sufficient ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed
over it.... You were not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous...”
“Oh yes, it is horribly stupid,” said Pierre.
“Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your opponent will
accept them,” said Nesvítski (who like the others concerned in the affair, and
like everyone in similar cases, did not yet believe that the affair had come to an
actual duel). “You know, Count, it is much more honorable to admit one’s
mistake than to let matters become irreparable. There was no insult on either
side. Allow me to convey....”
“No! What is there to talk about?” said Pierre. “It’s all the same.... Is
everything ready?” he added. “Only tell me where to go and where to shoot,” he
said with an unnaturally gentle smile.
He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of the
trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand—a fact that he did not wish
to confess.
“Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot,” said he.
“No apologies, none whatever,” said Dólokhov to Denísov (who on his side
had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to the appointed
place.
The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road, where the
sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine forest covered with melting
snow, the frost having begun to break up during the last few days. The
antagonists stood forty paces apart at the farther edge of the clearing. The
seconds, measuring the paces, left tracks in the deep wet snow between the place
where they had been standing and Nesvítski’s and Dólokhov’s sabers, which
were stuck into the ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing
and misty; at forty paces’ distance nothing could be seen. For three minutes all
had been ready, but they still delayed and all were silent.
CHAPTER V
“Well begin!” said Dólokhov.
“All right,” said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling of dread was
in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly begun could no longer be
averted but was taking its course independently of men’s will.
Denísov first went to the barrier and announced: “As the adve’sawies have
wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols, and at the word
thwee begin to advance.
“O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!” he shouted angrily and stepped aside.
The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and nearer to one
another, beginning to see one another through the mist. They had the right to fire
when they liked as they approached the barrier. Dólokhov walked slowly without
raising his pistol, looking intently with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his
antagonist’s face. His mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.
“So I can fire when I like!” said Pierre, and at the word “three,” he went
quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into the deep snow. He
held the pistol in his right hand at arm’s length, apparently afraid of shooting
himself with it. His left hand he held carefully back, because he wished to
support his right hand with it and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six
paces and strayed off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then
quickly glanced at Dólokhov and, bending his finger as he had been shown,
fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered at the sound and
then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The smoke, rendered denser by
the mist, prevented him from seeing anything for an instant, but there was no
second report as he had expected. He only heard Dólokhov’s hurried steps, and
his figure came in view through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his left
side, while the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face was pale. Rostóv ran
toward him and said something.
“No-o-o!” muttered Dólokhov through his teeth, “no, it’s not over.” And after
stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the saber, he sank on the snow
beside it. His left hand was bloody; he wiped it on his coat and supported
himself with it. His frowning face was pallid and quivered.
“Plea...” began Dólokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.
“Please,” he uttered with an effort.
Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dólokhov and was
about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dólokhov cried:
“To your barrier!” and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by his saber.
Only ten paces divided them. Dólokhov lowered his head to the snow, greedily
bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself, drew in his legs and sat up,
seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his
lips quivered but his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as
he mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.
“Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!” ejaculated Nesvítski.
“Cover yourself!” even Denísov cried to his adversary.
Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs helplessly
spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing Dólokhov and looked
sorrowfully at him. Denísov, Rostóv, and Nesvítski closed their eyes. At the
same instant they heard a report and Dólokhov’s angry cry.
“Missed!” shouted Dólokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on the
snow.
Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest, trampling
through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:
“Folly... folly! Death... lies...” he repeated, puckering his face.
Nesvítski stopped him and took him home.
Rostóv and Denísov drove away with the wounded Dólokhov.
The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not answer a word
to the questions addressed to him. But on entering Moscow he suddenly came to
and, lifting his head with an effort, took Rostóv, who was sitting beside him, by
the hand. Rostóv was struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous
and tender expression on Dólokhov’s face.
“Well? How do you feel?” he asked.
“Bad! But it’s not that, my friend—” said Dólokhov with a gasping voice.
“Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don’t matter, but I have killed her, killed...
She won’t get over it! She won’t survive....”
“Who?” asked Rostóv.
“My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother,” and Dólokhov
pressed Rostóv’s hand and burst into tears.
When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostóv that he was living
with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive it. He implored
Rostóv to go on and prepare her.
Rostóv went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise learned
that Dólokhov the brawler, Dólokhov the bully, lived in Moscow with an old
mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate of sons and
brothers.
CHAPTER VI
Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and in
Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after the duel he did
not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his father’s room, that
huge room in which Count Bezúkhov had died.
He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that had
happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings, thoughts, and
memories suddenly arose within him that he could not fall asleep, nor even
remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace the room with rapid steps.
Now he seemed to see her in the early days of their marriage, with bare
shoulders and a languid, passionate look on her face, and then immediately he
saw beside her Dólokhov’s handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he
had seen it at the banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, and suffering,
as it had been when he reeled and sank on the snow.
“What has happened?” he asked himself. “I have killed her lover, yes, killed
my wife’s lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come to do
it?”—“Because you married her,” answered an inner voice.
“But in what was I to blame?” he asked. “In marrying her without loving her;
in deceiving yourself and her.” And he vividly recalled that moment after supper
at Prince Vasíli’s, when he spoke those words he had found so difficult to utter:
“I love you.” “It all comes from that! Even then I felt it,” he thought. “I felt then
that it was not so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out.”
He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection. Particularly
vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection of how one day soon after
his marriage he came out of the bedroom into his study a little before noon in his
silk dressing gown and found his head steward there, who, bowing respectfully,
looked into his face and at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if
expressing respectful understanding of his employer’s happiness.
“But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic beauty and
social tact,” thought he; “been proud of my house, in which she received all
Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and beauty. So this is what I was
proud of! I then thought that I did not understand her. How often when
considering her character I have told myself that I was to blame for not
understanding her, for not understanding that constant composure and
complacency and lack of all interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the
terrible truth that she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terrible
word to myself all has become clear.
“Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss her naked
shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself be kissed. Her father
in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she replied with a calm smile that she was
not so stupid as to be jealous: ‘Let him do what he pleases,’ she used to say of
me. One day I asked her if she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed
contemptuously and said she was not a fool to want to have children, and that
she was not going to have any children by me.”
Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the
vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had been
brought up in the most aristocratic circles.
“I’m not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous promener,” * she used
to say. Often seeing the success she had with young and old men and women
Pierre could not understand why he did not love her.
* “You clear out of this.”
“Yes, I never loved her,” said he to himself; “I knew she was a depraved
woman,” he repeated, “but dared not admit it to myself. And now there’s
Dólokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and perhaps dying, while
meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!”
Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of what is called
weak character, do not seek a confidant in their troubles. He digested his
sufferings alone.
“It is all, all her fault,” he said to himself; “but what of that? Why did I bind
myself to her? Why did I say ‘Je vous aime’ * to her, which was a lie, and worse
than a lie? I am guilty and must endure... what? A slur on my name? A
misfortune for life? Oh, that’s nonsense,” he thought. “The slur on my name and
honor—that’s all apart from myself.”
* I love you.
“Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a
criminal,” came into Pierre’s head, “and from their point of view they were right,
as were those too who canonized him and died a martyr’s death for his sake.
Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a despot. Who is right and who is
wrong? No one! But if you are alive—live: tomorrow you’ll die as I might have
died an hour ago. And is it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a
moment of life in comparison with eternity?”
But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such reflections, she
suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments when he had most
strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he felt the blood rush to his
heart and had again to get up and move about and break and tear whatever came
to his hand. “Why did I tell her that ‘Je vous aime’?” he kept repeating to
himself. And when he had said it for the tenth time, Molière’s words: “Mais que
diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?” * occurred to him, and he began to
laugh at himself.
* “But what the devil was he doing in that galley?”
In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to Petersburg. He
could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He resolved to go away next
day and leave a letter informing her of his intention to part from her forever.
Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee, Pierre was
lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.
He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled expression, unable to
realize where he was.
“The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at home,” said
the valet.
But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the countess
herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver and with simply
dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round her lovely head like a coronet)
entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there was a wrathful wrinkle on
her rather prominent marble brow. With her imperturbable calm she did not
begin to speak in front of the valet. She knew of the duel and had come to speak
about it. She waited till the valet had set down the coffee things and left the
room. Pierre looked at her timidly over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded
by hounds who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless before her
enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless and
impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down but looked at
him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to go.
“Well, what’s this now? What have you been up to now, I should like to
know?” she asked sternly.
“I? What have I...?” stammered Pierre.
“So it seems you’re a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel about? What is
it meant to prove? What? I ask you.”
Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, but could not
reply.
“If you won’t answer, I’ll tell you...” Hélène went on. “You believe everything
you’re told. You were told...” Hélène laughed, “that Dólokhov was my lover,”
she said in French with her coarse plainness of speech, uttering the word amant
as casually as any other word, “and you believed it! Well, what have you
proved? What does this duel prove? That you’re a fool, que vous êtes un sot, but
everybody knew that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock
of all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing what you
were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without cause.” Hélène raised
her voice and became more and more excited, “A man who’s a better man than
you in every way...”
“Hm... Hm...!” growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her, and not
moving a muscle.
“And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like his
company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should prefer yours.”
“Don’t speak to me... I beg you,” muttered Pierre hoarsely.
“Why shouldn’t I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you plainly that there
are not many wives with husbands such as you who would not have taken lovers
(des amants), but I have not done so,” said she.
Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose strange
expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He was suffering
physically at that moment, there was a weight on his chest and he could not
breathe. He knew that he must do something to put an end to this suffering, but
what he wanted to do was too terrible.
“We had better separate,” he muttered in a broken voice.
“Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune,” said Hélène.
“Separate! That’s a thing to frighten me with!”
Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.
“I’ll kill you!” he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table with a
strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her brandishing the slab.
Hélène’s face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His father’s
nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and delight of frenzy. He
flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down on her with outstretched
hands shouted, “Get out!” in such a terrible voice that the whole house heard it
with horror. God knows what he would have done at that moment had Hélène
not fled from the room.
A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his estates in Great
Russia, which formed the larger part of his property, and left for Petersburg
alone.
CHAPTER VII
Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz and the loss
of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite of the letters sent through
the embassy and all the searches made, his body had not been found nor was he
on the list of prisoners. What was worst of all for his relations was the fact that
there was still a possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the
people of the place and that he might now be lying, recovering or dying, alone
among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The gazettes from which
the old prince first heard of the defeat at Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly
and vaguely, that after brilliant engagements the Russians had had to retreat and
had made their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince understood from this
official report that our army had been defeated. A week after the gazette report of
the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from Kutúzov informing the prince of the
fate that had befallen his son.
“Your son,” wrote Kutúzov, “fell before my eyes, a standard in his hand and at
the head of a regiment—he fell as a hero, worthy of his father and his fatherland.
To the great regret of myself and of the whole army it is still uncertain whether
he is alive or not. I comfort myself and you with the hope that your son is alive,
for otherwise he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the
field of battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce.”
After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone in his study,
the old prince went for his walk as usual next morning, but he was silent with his
steward, the gardener, and the architect, and though he looked very grim he said
nothing to anyone.
When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at his lathe
and, as usual, did not look round at her.
“Ah, Princess Mary!” he said suddenly in an unnatural voice, throwing down
his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own impetus, and Princess
Mary long remembered the dying creak of that wheel, which merged in her
memory with what followed.)
She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her. Her
eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father’s face, not sad, not crushed, but
angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging over her and about to crush
her was some terrible misfortune, the worst in life, one she had not yet
experienced, irreparable and incomprehensible—the death of one she loved.
“Father! Andrew!”—said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such an
indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her father could not
bear her look but turned away with a sob.
“Bad news! He’s not among the prisoners nor among the killed! Kutúzov
writes...” and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to drive the princess
away by that scream... “Killed!”
The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but on hearing
these words her face changed and something brightened in her beautiful, radiant
eyes. It was as if joy—a supreme joy apart from the joys and sorrows of this
world—overflowed the great grief within her. She forgot all fear of her father,
went up to him, took his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his
thin, scraggy neck.
“Father,” she said, “do not turn away from me, let us weep together.”
“Scoundrels! Blackguards!” shrieked the old man, turning his face away from
her. “Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why? Go, go and tell Lise.”
The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father and wept. She
saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he took leave of her
and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw him tender and amused as he was
when he put on the little icon. “Did he believe? Had he repented of his unbelief?
Was he now there? There in the realms of eternal peace and blessedness?” she
thought.
“Father, tell me how it happened,” she asked through her tears.
“Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and Russia’s glory
were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell Lise. I will follow.”
When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat working
and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy calm peculiar to
pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did not see Princess Mary but were
looking within... into herself... at something joyful and mysterious taking place
within her.
“Mary,” she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying back,
“give me your hand.” She took her sister-in-law’s hand and held it below her
waist.
Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained lifted in
childlike happiness.
Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of her sister-
in-law’s dress.
“There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know, Mary, I am
going to love him very much,” said Lise, looking with bright and happy eyes at
her sister-in-law.
Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.
“What is the matter, Mary?”
“Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew,” she said, wiping away her
tears on her sister-in-law’s knee.
Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began trying to
prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry. Unobservant as was the
little princess, these tears, the cause of which she did not understand, agitated
her. She said nothing but looked about uneasily as if in search of something.
Before dinner the old prince, of whom she was always afraid, came into her
room with a peculiarly restless and malign expression and went out again
without saying a word. She looked at Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a
while with that expression of attention to something within her that is only seen
in pregnant women, and suddenly began to cry.
“Has anything come from Andrew?” she asked.
“No, you know it’s too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I feel
afraid.”
“So there’s nothing?”
“Nothing,” answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant eyes at
her sister-in-law.
She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to hide the terrible
news from her till after her confinement, which was expected within a few days.
Princess Mary and the old prince each bore and hid their grief in their own way.
The old prince would not cherish any hope: he made up his mind that Prince
Andrew had been killed, and though he sent an official to Austria to seek for
traces of his son, he ordered a monument from Moscow which he intended to
erect in his own garden to his memory, and he told everybody that his son had
been killed. He tried not to change his former way of life, but his strength failed
him. He walked less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker every day. Princess
Mary hoped. She prayed for her brother as living and was always awaiting news
of his return.
CHAPTER VIII
“Dearest,” said the little princess after breakfast on the morning of the
nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit, but as sorrow was
manifest in every smile, the sound of every word, and even every footstep in that
house since the terrible news had come, so now the smile of the little princess—
influenced by the general mood though without knowing its cause—was such as
to remind one still more of the general sorrow.
“Dearest, I’m afraid this morning’s fruschtique *—as Fóka the cook calls it—
has disagreed with me.”
* Frühstück: breakfast.
“What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are very
pale!” said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft, ponderous steps up to
her sister-in-law.
“Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdánovna be sent for?” said one of the
maids who was present. (Mary Bogdánovna was a midwife from the neighboring
town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)
“Oh yes,” assented Princess Mary, “perhaps that’s it. I’ll go. Courage, my
angel.” She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.
“Oh, no, no!” And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on the little
princess’ face, an expression of childish fear of inevitable pain showed itself.
“No, it’s only indigestion?... Say it’s only indigestion, say so, Mary! Say...”
And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a suffering child and to
wring her little hands even with some affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the
room to fetch Mary Bogdánovna.
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!” she heard as she left the room.
The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small, plump
white hands with an air of calm importance.
“Mary Bogdánovna, I think it’s beginning!” said Princess Mary looking at the
midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.
“Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess,” said Mary Bogdánovna, not hastening
her steps. “You young ladies should not know anything about it.”
“But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?” said the princess. (In
accordance with Lise’s and Prince Andrew’s wishes they had sent in good time
to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at any moment.)
“No matter, Princess, don’t be alarmed,” said Mary Bogdánovna. “We’ll
manage very well without a doctor.”
Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy being
carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the large leather sofa
from Prince Andrew’s study into the bedroom. On their faces was a quiet and
solemn look.
Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the house, now
and then opening her door when someone passed and watching what was going
on in the passage. Some women passing with quiet steps in and out of the
bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away. She did not venture to ask any
questions, and shut the door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now
taking her prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise and
distress she found that her prayers did not calm her excitement. Suddenly her
door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskóvya Sávishna, who hardly ever
came to that room as the old prince had forbidden it, appeared on the threshold
with a shawl round her head.
“I’ve come to sit with you a bit, Másha,” said the nurse, “and here I’ve
brought the prince’s wedding candles to light before his saint, my angel,” she
said with a sigh.
“Oh, nurse, I’m so glad!”
“God is merciful, birdie.”
The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by the door with
her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began reading. Only when footsteps
or voices were heard did they look at one another, the princess anxious and
inquiring, the nurse encouraging. Everyone in the house was dominated by the
same feeling that Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing
to the superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman in
travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it, but
apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good manners habitual in the
prince’s household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and a
consciousness that something great and mysterious was being accomplished at
that moment made itself felt.
There was no laughter in the maids’ large hall. In the men servants’ hall all sat
waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs’ quarters torches and candles
were burning and no one slept. The old prince, stepping on his heels, paced up
and down his study and sent Tíkhon to ask Mary Bogdánovna what news.—“Say
only that ‘the prince told me to ask,’ and come and tell me her answer.”
“Inform the prince that labor has begun,” said Mary Bogdánovna, giving the
messenger a significant look.
Tíkhon went and told the prince.
“Very good!” said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tíkhon did not
hear the slightest sound from the study after that.
After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and, seeing the prince
was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his perturbed face, shook his head,
and going up to him silently kissed him on the shoulder and left the room
without snuffing the candles or saying why he had entered. The most solemn
mystery in the world continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the
feeling of suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable
did not lessen but increased. No one slept.
It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume its
sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A relay of horses
had been sent up the highroad to meet the German doctor from Moscow who
was expected every moment, and men on horseback with lanterns were sent to
the crossroads to guide him over the country road with its hollows and snow-
covered pools of water.
Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her luminous
eyes fixed on her nurse’s wrinkled face (every line of which she knew so well),
on the lock of gray hair that escaped from under the kerchief, and the loose skin
that hung under her chin.
Nurse Sávishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely hearing or
understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds of times before: how
the late princess had given birth to Princess Mary in Kishenëv with only a
Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a midwife.
“God is merciful, doctors are never needed,” she said.
Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the window,
from which the double frame had been removed (by order of the prince, one
window frame was removed in each room as soon as the larks returned), and,
forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the damask curtain flapping and blew out
the candle with its chill, snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse,
putting down the stocking she was knitting, went to the window and leaning out
tried to catch the open casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her kerchief
and her loose locks of gray hair.
“Princess, my dear, there’s someone driving up the avenue!” she said, holding
the casement and not closing it. “With lanterns. Most likely the doctor.”
“Oh, my God! thank God!” said Princess Mary. “I must go and meet him, he
does not know Russian.”
Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the newcomer. As
she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the window a carriage with
lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On a banister post
stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft. On the landing below, Philip,
the footman, stood looking scared and holding another candle. Still lower,
beyond the turn of the staircase, one could hear the footstep of someone in thick
felt boots, and a voice that seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying
something.
“Thank God!” said the voice. “And Father?”
“Gone to bed,” replied the voice of Demyán the house steward, who was
downstairs.
Then the voice said something more, Demyán replied, and the steps in the felt
boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more rapidly.
“It’s Andrew!” thought Princess Mary. “No it can’t be, that would be too
extraordinary,” and at the very moment she thought this, the face and figure of
Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of which covered with snow,
appeared on the landing where the footman stood with the candle. Yes, it was he,
pale, thin, with a changed and strangely softened but agitated expression on his
face. He came up the stairs and embraced his sister.
“You did not get my letter?” he asked, and not waiting for a reply—which he
would not have received, for the princess was unable to speak—he turned back,
rapidly mounted the stairs again with the doctor who had entered the hall after
him (they had met at the last post station), and again embraced his sister.
“What a strange fate, Másha darling!” And having taken off his cloak and felt
boots, he went to the little princess’ apartment.
CHAPTER IX
The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on her head (the
pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair lay round her inflamed and
perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy mouth with its downy lip was open and she
was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew entered and paused facing her at the foot of
the sofa on which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear
and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression. “I love you all
and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!” her look
seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not realize the significance of his
appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went round the sofa and kissed her
forehead.
“My darling!” he said—a word he had never used to her before. “God is
merciful....”
She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
“I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!” said her
eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not realize that he had
come. His coming had nothing to do with her sufferings or with their relief. The
pangs began again and Mary Bogdánovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the
room.
The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess Mary,
again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk broke off at every
moment. They waited and listened.
“Go, dear,” said Princess Mary.
Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room next to hers.
A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and became confused
when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with his hands and remained
so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal moans came through the door.
Prince Andrew got up, went to the door, and tried to open it. Someone was
holding it shut.
“You can’t come in! You can’t!” said a terrified voice from within.
He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more seconds
went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek—it could not be hers, she could not
scream like that—came from the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to the door; the
scream ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.
“What have they taken a baby in there for?” thought Prince Andrew in the
first second. “A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or is the baby
born?”
Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; tears choked
him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill he began to cry, sobbing like a
child. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt sleeves tucked up, without a
coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned
to him, but the doctor gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word.
A woman rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the
threshold. He went into his wife’s room. She was lying dead, in the same
position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and
the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face
with its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.
“I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you done to
me?”—said her charming, pathetic, dead face.
In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and squealed in
Mary Bogdánovna’s trembling white hands.
Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his father’s room.
The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to the door and as
soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise round his son’s neck, and
without a word he began to sob like a child.
Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went up the
steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the
coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. “Ah, what have you done to
me?” it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in
his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He
could not weep. The old man too came up and kissed the waxen little hands that
lay quietly crossed one on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face
seemed to say: “Ah, what have you done to me, and why?” And at the sight the
old man turned angrily away.
Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas Andréevich
was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her chin, while the
priest with a goose feather anointed the boy’s little red and wrinkled soles and
palms.
His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of dropping him,
carried the infant round the battered tin font and handed him over to the
godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat in another room, faint with fear
lest the baby should be drowned in the font, and awaited the termination of the
ceremony. He looked up joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him
and nodded approval when she told him that the wax with the baby’s hair had
not sunk in the font but had floated.
CHAPTER X
Rostóv’s share in Dólokhov’s duel with Bezúkhov was hushed up by the
efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks as he
expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of Moscow. As a
result he could not go to the country with the rest of the family, but was kept all
summer in Moscow by his new duties. Dólokhov recovered, and Rostóv became
very friendly with him during his convalescence. Dólokhov lay ill at his
mother’s who loved him passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivánovna, who
had grown fond of Rostóv for his friendship to her Fédya, often talked to him
about her son.
“Yes, Count,” she would say, “he is too noble and pure-souled for our present,
depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like a reproach to everyone.
Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it honorable, of Bezúkhov? And Fédya,
with his noble spirit, loved him and even now never says a word against him.
Those pranks in Petersburg when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn’t
they do it together? And there! Bezúkhov got off scotfree, while Fédya had to
bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go through! It’s
true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail to do that? I think there were
not many such gallant sons of the fatherland out there as he. And now—this
duel! Have these people no feeling, or honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to
challenge him and shoot so straight! It’s well God had mercy on us. And what
was it for? Who doesn’t have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as
I see things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for months. And
then to call him out, reckoning on Fédya not fighting because he owed him
money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you understand Fédya, my dear
count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few people do understand
him. He is such a lofty, heavenly soul!”
Dólokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostóv in a way no one
would have expected of him.
“I know people consider me a bad man!” he said. “Let them! I don’t care a
straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love so that I would give
my life for them, and the others I’d throttle if they stood in my way. I have an
adored, a priceless mother, and two or three friends—you among them—and as
for the rest I only care about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And
most of them are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy,” he continued,
“I have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any women
—countesses or cooks—who were not venal. I have not yet met that divine
purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a one I’d give my life
for her! But those!...” and he made a gesture of contempt. “And believe me, if I
still value my life it is only because I still hope to meet such a divine creature,
who will regenerate, purify, and elevate me. But you don’t understand it.”
“Oh, yes, I quite understand,” answered Rostóv, who was under his new
friend’s influence.
In the autumn the Rostóvs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter Denísov
also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the winter of 1806, which
Nicholas Rostóv spent in Moscow, was one of the happiest, merriest times for
him and the whole family. Nicholas brought many young men to his parents’
house. Véra was a handsome girl of twenty; Sónya a girl of sixteen with all the
charm of an opening flower; Natásha, half grown up and half child, was now
childishly amusing, now girlishly enchanting.
At that time in the Rostóvs’ house there prevailed an amorous atmosphere
characteristic of homes where there are very young and very charming girls.
Every young man who came to the house—seeing those impressionable, smiling
young faces (smiling probably at their own happiness), feeling the eager bustle
around him, and hearing the fitful bursts of song and music and the inconsequent
but friendly prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hope—
experienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the Rostóvs’
household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.
Among the young men introduced by Rostóv one of the first was Dólokhov,
whom everyone in the house liked except Natásha. She almost quarreled with
her brother about him. She insisted that he was a bad man, and that in the duel
with Bezúkhov, Pierre was right and Dólokhov wrong, and further that he was
disagreeable and unnatural.
“There’s nothing for me to understand,” she cried out with resolute self-will,
“he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denísov though he is a rake
and all that, still I like him; so you see I do understand. I don’t know how to put
it... with this one everything is calculated, and I don’t like that. But Denísov...”
“Oh, Denísov is quite different,” replied Nicholas, implying that even Denísov
was nothing compared to Dólokhov—“you must understand what a soul there is
in Dólokhov, you should see him with his mother. What a heart!”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And do you
know he has fallen in love with Sónya?”
“What nonsense...”
“I’m certain of it; you’ll see.”
Natásha’s prediction proved true. Dólokhov, who did not usually care for the
society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the question for whose
sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon settled. He came because of
Sónya. And Sónya, though she would never have dared to say so, knew it and
blushed scarlet every time Dólokhov appeared.
Dólokhov often dined at the Rostóvs’, never missed a performance at which
they were present, and went to Iogel’s balls for young people which the Rostóvs
always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sónya and looked at her in such a
way that not only could she not bear his glances without coloring, but even the
old countess and Natásha blushed when they saw his looks.
It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the irresistible influence
of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.
Rostóv noticed something new in Dólokhov’s relations with Sónya, but he did
not explain to himself what these new relations were. “They’re always in love
with someone,” he thought of Sónya and Natásha. But he was not as much at
ease with Sónya and Dólokhov as before and was less frequently at home.
In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war with
Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders were given to
raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the regular army, and besides this,
nine men in every thousand for the militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was
anathematized and in Moscow nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the
Rostóv family the whole interest of these preparations for war lay in the fact that
Nicholas would not hear of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the
termination of Denísov’s furlough after Christmas to return with him to their
regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his amusing himself, but
rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away from
home, at dinners, parties, and balls.
CHAPTER XI
On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing he had rarely
done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he and Denísov were leaving to
join their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people were present, including
Dólokhov and Denísov.
Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostóvs’ house as at this holiday
time. “Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only
reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here,”
said the spirit of the place.
Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without visiting all
the places he meant to go to and where he had been invited, returned home just
before dinner. As soon as he entered he noticed and felt the tension of the
amorous air in the house, and also noticed a curious embarrassment among some
of those present. Sónya, Dólokhov, and the old countess were especially
disturbed, and to a lesser degree Natásha. Nicholas understood that something
must have happened between Sónya and Dólokhov before dinner, and with the
kindly sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both at
dinner. On that same evening there was to be one of the balls that Iogel (the
dancing master) gave for his pupils during the holidays.
“Nicholas, will you come to Iogel’s? Please do!” said Natásha. “He asked you,
and Vasíli Dmítrich * is also going.”
* Denísov.
“Where would I not go at the countess’ command!” said Denísov, who at the
Rostóvs’ had jocularly assumed the role of Natásha’s knight. “I’m even weady to
dance the pas de châle.”
“If I have time,” answered Nicholas. “But I promised the Arkhárovs; they
have a party.”
“And you?” he asked Dólokhov, but as soon as he had asked the question he
noticed that it should not have been put.
“Perhaps,” coldly and angrily replied Dólokhov, glancing at Sónya, and,
scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given Pierre at the club
dinner.
“There is something up,” thought Nicholas, and he was further confirmed in
this conclusion by the fact that Dólokhov left immediately after dinner. He called
Natásha and asked her what was the matter.
“And I was looking for you,” said Natásha running out to him. “I told you, but
you would not believe it,” she said triumphantly. “He has proposed to Sónya!”
Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sónya of late, something seemed
to give way within him at this news. Dólokhov was a suitable and in some
respects a brilliant match for the dowerless, orphan girl. From the point of view
of the old countess and of society it was out of the question for her to refuse him.
And therefore Nicholas’ first feeling on hearing the news was one of anger with
Sónya.... He tried to say, “That’s capital; of course she’ll forget her childish
promises and accept the offer,” but before he had time to say it Natásha began
again.
“And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!” adding, after a pause, “she told
him she loved another.”
“Yes, my Sónya could not have done otherwise!” thought Nicholas.
“Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won’t change
once she has said...”
“And Mamma pressed her!” said Nicholas reproachfully.
“Yes,” said Natásha. “Do you know, Nicholas—don’t be angry—but I know
you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know for certain that
you won’t marry her.”
“Now you don’t know that at all!” said Nicholas. “But I must talk to her. What
a darling Sónya is!” he added with a smile.
“Ah, she is indeed a darling! I’ll send her to you.”
And Natásha kissed her brother and ran away.
A minute later Sónya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared look.
Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the first time since his
return that they had talked alone and about their love.
“Sophie,” he began, timidly at first and then more and more boldly, “if you
wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and advantageous match but a
splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend...”
Sónya interrupted him.
“I have already refused,” she said hurriedly.
“If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I...”
Sónya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.
“Nicholas, don’t tell me that!” she said.
“No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to say it. If you
refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole truth. I love you, and I think
I love you more than anyone else....”
“That is enough for me,” said Sónya, blushing.
“No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love again,
though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship, confidence, and love as I
have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does not wish it. In a word, I make no
promise. And I beg you to consider Dólokhov’s offer,” he said, articulating his
friend’s name with difficulty.
“Don’t say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and always
shall, and I want nothing more.”
“You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of misleading you.”
And Nicholas again kissed her hand.
CHAPTER XII
Iogel’s were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers as they
watched their young people executing their newly learned steps, and so said the
youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they were ready to drop, and
so said the grown-up young men and women who came to these balls with an air
of condescension and found them most enjoyable. That year two marriages had
come of these balls. The two pretty young Princesses Gorchakóv met suitors
there and were married and so further increased the fame of these dances. What
distinguished them from others was the absence of host or hostess and the
presence of the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a feather and bowing
according to the rules of his art, as he collected the tickets from all his visitors.
There was the fact that only those came who wished to dance and amuse
themselves as girls of thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for
the first time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to be, pretty
—so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes. Sometimes the best
of the pupils, of whom Natásha, who was exceptionally graceful, was first, even
danced the pas de châle, but at this last ball only the écossaise, the anglaise, and
the mazurka, which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a
ballroom in Bezúkhov’s house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a great
success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostóv girls were among the
prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay. That evening, proud of
Dólokhov’s proposal, her refusal, and her explanation with Nicholas, Sónya
twirled about before she left home so that the maid could hardly get her hair
plaited, and she was transparently radiant with impulsive joy.
Natásha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real ball was
even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with pink ribbons.
Natásha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She was not in
love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever person she
happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.
“Oh, how delightful it is!” she kept saying, running up to Sónya.
Nicholas and Denísov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
patronage at the dancers.
“How sweet she is—she will be a weal beauty!” said Denísov.
“Who?”
“Countess Natásha,” answered Denísov.
“And how she dances! What gwace!” he said again after a pause.
“Who are you talking about?”
“About your sister,” ejaculated Denísov testily.
Rostóv smiled.
“My dear count, you were one of my best pupils—you must dance,” said little
Iogel coming up to Nicholas. “Look how many charming young ladies—” He
turned with the same request to Denísov who was also a former pupil of his.
“No, my dear fellow, I’ll be a wallflower,” said Denísov. “Don’t you wecollect
what bad use I made of your lessons?”
“Oh no!” said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. “You were only inattentive,
but you had talent—oh yes, you had talent!”
The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not refuse
Iogel and asked Sónya to dance. Denísov sat down by the old ladies and, leaning
on his saber and beating time with his foot, told them something funny and kept
them amused, while he watched the young people dancing, Iogel with Natásha,
his pride and his best pupil, were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping
with his little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with Natásha,
who, though shy, went on carefully executing her steps. Denísov did not take his
eyes off her and beat time with his saber in a way that clearly indicated that if he
was not dancing it was because he would not and not because he could not. In
the middle of a figure he beckoned to Rostóv who was passing:
“This is not at all the thing,” he said. “What sort of Polish mazuwka is this?
But she does dance splendidly.”
Knowing that Denísov had a reputation even in Poland for the masterly way in
which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to Natásha:
“Go and choose Denísov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!” he said.
When it came to Natásha’s turn to choose a partner, she rose and, tripping
rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran timidly to the corner
where Denísov sat. She saw that everybody was looking at her and waiting.
Nicholas saw that Denísov was refusing though he smiled delightedly. He ran up
to them.
“Please, Vasíli Dmítrich,” Natásha was saying, “do come!”
“Oh no, let me off, Countess,” Denísov replied.
“Now then, Váska,” said Nicholas.
“They coax me as if I were Váska the cat!” said Denísov jokingly.
“I’ll sing for you a whole evening,” said Natásha.
“Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!” said Denísov, and he
unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his partner’s
hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot, waiting for the beat.
Only on horse back and in the mazurka was Denísov’s short stature not
noticeable and he looked the fine fellow he felt himself to be. At the right beat of
the music he looked sideways at his partner with a merry and triumphant air,
suddenly stamped with one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew
round the room taking his partner with him. He glided silently on one foot half
across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs was dashing straight at
them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and spreading out his legs, he stopped
short on his heels, stood so a second, stamped on the spot clanking his spurs,
whirled rapidly round, and, striking his left heel against his right, flew round
again in a circle. Natásha guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself
to him followed his lead hardly knowing how. First he spun her round, holding
her now with his left, now with his right hand, then falling on one knee he
twirled her round him, and again jumping up, dashed so impetuously forward
that it seemed as if he would rush through the whole suite of rooms without
drawing breath, and then he suddenly stopped and performed some new and
unexpected steps. When at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her
chair, he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natásha did not
even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement, smiling as if
she did not recognize him.
“What does this mean?” she brought out.
Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka, everyone was
delighted with Denísov’s skill, he was asked again and again as a partner, and the
old men began smilingly to talk about Poland and the good old days. Denísov,
flushed after the mazurka and mopping himself with his handkerchief, sat down
by Natásha and did not leave her for the rest of the evening.
CHAPTER XIII
For two days after that Rostóv did not see Dólokhov at his own or at
Dólokhov’s home: on the third day he received a note from him:
As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know of, and am
going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell supper tonight to my friends
—come to the English Hotel.
About ten o’clock Rostóv went to the English Hotel straight from the theater,
where he had been with his family and Denísov. He was at once shown to the
best room, which Dólokhov had taken for that evening. Some twenty men were
gathered round a table at which Dólokhov sat between two candles. On the table
was a pile of gold and paper money, and he was keeping the bank. Rostóv had
not seen him since his proposal and Sónya’s refusal and felt uncomfortable at the
thought of how they would meet.
Dólokhov’s clear, cold glance met Rostóv as soon as he entered the door, as
though he had long expected him.
“It’s a long time since we met,” he said. “Thanks for coming. I’ll just finish
dealing, and then Ilyúshka will come with his chorus.”
“I called once or twice at your house,” said Rostóv, reddening.
Dólokhov made no reply.
“You may punt,” he said.
Rostóv recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once had with
Dólokhov. “None but fools trust to luck in play,” Dólokhov had then said.
“Or are you afraid to play with me?” Dólokhov now asked as if guessing
Rostóv’s thought.
Beneath his smile Rostóv saw in him the mood he had shown at the club
dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he had felt a need to
escape from it by some strange, and usually cruel, action.
Rostóv felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke with which to
reply to Dólokhov’s words. But before he had thought of anything, Dólokhov,
looking straight in his face, said slowly and deliberately so that everyone could
hear:
“Do you remember we had a talk about cards... ‘He’s a fool who trusts to luck,
one should make certain,’ and I want to try.”
“To try his luck or the certainty?” Rostóv asked himself.
“Well, you’d better not play,” Dólokhov added, and springing a new pack of
cards said: “Bank, gentlemen!”
Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostóv sat down by his side
and at first did not play. Dólokhov kept glancing at him.
“Why don’t you play?” he asked.
And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up a card,
putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.
“I have no money with me,” he said.
“I’ll trust you.”
Rostóv staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and again lost.
Dólokhov “killed,” that is, beat, ten cards of Rostóv’s running.
“Gentlemen,” said Dólokhov after he had dealt for some time. “Please place
your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning.”
One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.
“Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I ask you to
put the money on your cards,” replied Dólokhov. “Don’t stint yourself, we’ll
settle afterwards,” he added, turning to Rostóv.
The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.
All Rostóv’s cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles scored up
against him. He wrote “800 rubles” on a card, but while the waiter filled his
glass he changed his mind and altered it to his usual stake of twenty rubles.
“Leave it,” said Dólokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking at
Rostóv, “you’ll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others but win from you.
Or are you afraid of me?” he asked again.
Rostóv submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a seven of
hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the floor. He well
remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts, on which
with a broken bit of chalk he had written “800 rubles” in clear upright figures; he
emptied the glass of warm champagne that was handed him, smiled at
Dólokhov’s words, and with a sinking heart, waiting for a seven to turn up,
gazed at Dólokhov’s hands which held the pack. Much depended on Rostóv’s
winning or losing on that seven of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count
had given his son two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked speaking
of money difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all he could let him have till
May, and asked him to be more economical this time. Nicholas had replied that it
would be more than enough for him and that he gave his word of honor not to
take anything more till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left of
that money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the loss of sixteen
hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his word. With a sinking heart
he watched Dólokhov’s hands and thought, “Now then, make haste and let me
have this card and I’ll take my cap and drive home to supper with Denísov,
Natásha, and Sónya, and will certainly never touch a card again.” At that
moment his home life, jokes with Pétya, talks with Sónya, duets with Natásha,
piquet with his father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the
Povarskáya rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm that it
seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss, long past. He could not
conceive that a stupid chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right rather than to
the left, might deprive him of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly
illumined, and plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined misery.
That could not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the movement of
Dólokhov’s hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy wrists visible from
under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took up a glass and a pipe that were
handed him.
“So you are not afraid to play with me?” repeated Dólokhov, and as if about to
tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in his chair, and began
deliberately with a smile:
“Yes, gentlemen, I’ve been told there’s a rumor going about Moscow that I’m
a sharper, so I advise you to be careful.”
“Come now, deal!” exclaimed Rostóv.
“Oh, those Moscow gossips!” said Dólokhov, and he took up the cards with a
smile.
“Aah!” Rostóv almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The seven he
needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He had lost more than he
could pay.
“Still, don’t ruin yourself!” said Dólokhov with a side glance at Rostóv as he
continued to deal.
CHAPTER XIV
An hour and a half later most of the players were but little interested in their
own play.
The whole interest was concentrated on Rostóv. Instead of sixteen hundred
rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him, which he had
reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely supposed, must have
risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already exceeded twenty thousand rubles.
Dólokhov was no longer listening to stories or telling them, but followed every
movement of Rostóv’s hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against
him. He had decided to play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He
had fixed on that number because forty-three was the sum of his and Sónya’s
joint ages. Rostóv, leaning his head on both hands, sat at the table which was
scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled wine, and littered with cards. One
tormenting impression did not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands
with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he
loved and hated, held him in their power.
“Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back’s impossible... Oh,
how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or quits... it can’t be!... And
why is he doing this to me?” Rostóv pondered. Sometimes he staked a large
sum, but Dólokhov refused to accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas
submitted to him, and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the
battlefield at the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came
first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now
counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried staking
the total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from the other players,
or peered at the now cold face of Dólokhov and tried to read what was passing in
his mind.
“He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can’t want my ruin.
Wasn’t he my friend? Wasn’t I fond of him? But it’s not his fault. What’s he to
do if he has such luck?... And it’s not my fault either,” he thought to himself, “I
have done nothing wrong. Have I killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to
anyone? Why such a terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little
while ago I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to
buy that casket for Mamma’s name day and then going home. I was so happy, so
free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I was! When did that end
and when did this new, terrible state of things begin? What marked the change? I
sat all the time in this same place at this table, chose and placed cards, and
watched those broad-boned agile hands in the same way. When did it happen and
what has happened? I am well and strong and still the same and in the same
place. No, it can’t be! Surely it will all end in nothing!”
He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot. His
face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless efforts to seem
calm.
The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand. Rostóv
had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of which he meant to double the
three thousand just put down to his score, when Dólokhov, slamming down the
pack of cards, put it aside and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostóv’s debt,
breaking the chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.
“Supper, it’s time for supper! And here are the gypsies!”
Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold outside and
saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas understood that it was all
over; but he said in an indifferent tone:
“Well, won’t you go on? I had a splendid card all ready,” as if it were the fun
of the game which interested him most.
“It’s all up! I’m lost!” thought he. “Now a bullet through my brain—that’s all
that’s left me!” And at the same time he said in a cheerful voice:
“Come now, just this one more little card!”
“All right!” said Dólokhov, having finished the addition. “All right! Twenty-
one rubles,” he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one by which the total
exceeded the round sum of forty-three thousand; and taking up a pack he
prepared to deal. Rostóv submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead
of the six thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.
“It’s all the same to me,” he said. “I only want to see whether you will let me
win this ten, or beat it.”
Dólokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostóv detested at that moment
those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy wrists, which held him in
their power.... The ten fell to him.
“You owe forty-three thousand, Count,” said Dólokhov, and stretching himself
he rose from the table. “One does get tired sitting so long,” he added.
“Yes, I’m tired too,” said Rostóv.
Dólokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to jest.
“When am I to receive the money, Count?”
Rostóv, flushing, drew Dólokhov into the next room.
“I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?” he said.
“I say, Rostóv,” said Dólokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas straight
in the eyes, “you know the saying, ‘Lucky in love, unlucky at cards.’ Your
cousin is in love with you, I know.”
“Oh, it’s terrible to feel oneself so in this man’s power,” thought Rostóv. He
knew what a shock he would inflict on his father and mother by the news of this
loss, he knew what a relief it would be to escape it all, and felt that Dólokhov
knew that he could save him from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to
play with him as a cat does with a mouse.
“Your cousin...” Dólokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted him.
“My cousin has nothing to do with this and it’s not necessary to mention her!”
he exclaimed fiercely.
“Then when am I to have it?”
“Tomorrow,” replied Rostóv and left the room.
CHAPTER XV
To say “tomorrow” and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult, but to go
home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father, confess and ask for
money he had no right to after giving his word of honor, was terrible.
At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after returning from
the theater, had had supper and were grouped round the clavichord. As soon as
Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic atmosphere of love which
pervaded the Rostóv household that winter and, now after Dólokhov’s proposal
and Iogel’s ball, seemed to have grown thicker round Sónya and Natásha as the
air does before a thunderstorm. Sónya and Natásha, in the light-blue dresses they
had worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing by the
clavichord, happy and smiling. Véra was playing chess with Shinshín in the
drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return of her husband and son,
sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who lived in their house.
Denísov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking
chords with his short fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he
sang, with his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called “Enchantress,”
which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:
Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
What magic power is this recalls me still?
What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?
He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his sparkling black-agate eyes
at the frightened and happy Natásha.
“Splendid! Excellent!” exclaimed Natásha. “Another verse,” she said, without
noticing Nicholas.
“Everything’s still the same with them,” thought Nicholas, glancing into the
drawing room, where he saw Véra and his mother with the old lady.
“Ah, and here’s Nicholas!” cried Natásha, running up to him.
“Is Papa at home?” he asked.
“I am so glad you’ve come!” said Natásha, without answering him. “We are
enjoying ourselves! Vasíli Dmítrich is staying a day longer for my sake! Did you
know?”
“No, Papa is not back yet,” said Sónya.
“Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!” called the old countess from
the drawing room.
Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently at her table
began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the dancing room, they still
heard the laughter and merry voices trying to persuade Natásha to sing.
“All wight! All wight!” shouted Denísov. “It’s no good making excuses now!
It’s your turn to sing the ba’cawolla—I entweat you!”
The countess glanced at her silent son.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” said he, as if weary of being continually asked the same
question. “Will Papa be back soon?”
“I expect so.”
“Everything’s the same with them. They know nothing about it! Where am I
to go?” thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing room where the
clavichord stood.
Sónya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to Denísov’s favorite
barcarolle. Natásha was preparing to sing. Denísov was looking at her with
enraptured eyes.
Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
“Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There’s nothing to
be happy about!” thought he.
Sónya struck the first chord of the prelude.
“My God, I’m a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my brain is the
only thing left me—not singing!” his thoughts ran on. “Go away? But where to?
It’s one—let them sing!”
He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denísov and the girls and
avoiding their eyes.
“Nikólenka, what is the matter?” Sónya’s eyes fixed on him seemed to ask.
She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
Nicholas turned away from her. Natásha too, with her quick instinct, had
instantly noticed her brother’s condition. But, though she noticed it, she was
herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from sorrow, sadness, or self-
reproach, that she purposely deceived herself as young people often do. “No, I
am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with anyone’s sorrow,”
she felt, and she said to herself: “No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling
happy, just as I am.”
“Now, Sónya!” she said, going to the very middle of the room, where she
considered the resonance was best.
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet dancers do,
Natásha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes, stepped to the middle of
the room and stood still.
“Yes, that’s me!” she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with which
Denísov followed her.
“And what is she so pleased about?” thought Nicholas, looking at his sister.
“Why isn’t she dull and ashamed?”
Natásha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her eyes became
serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her surroundings, and from her
smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may produce at the same intervals and
hold for the same time, but which leave you cold a thousand times and the
thousand and first time thrill you and make you weep.
Natásha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously, mainly
because Denísov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang as a child, there
was no longer in her singing that comical, childish, painstaking effect that had
been in it before; but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard
her said: “It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained.” Only
they generally said this some time after she had finished singing. While that
untrained voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions, was
sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished
to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness
of her own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled
with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be
altered without spoiling it.
“What is this?” thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely opened eyes.
“What has happened to her? How she is singing today!” And suddenly the whole
world centered for him on anticipation of the next note, the next phrase, and
everything in the world was divided into three beats: “Oh mio crudele affetto.”...
One, two, three... one, two, three... One... “Oh mio crudele affetto.”... One, two,
three... One. “Oh, this senseless life of ours!” thought Nicholas. “All this misery,
and money, and Dólokhov, and anger, and honor—it’s all nonsense... but this is
real.... Now then, Natásha, now then, dearest! Now then, darling! How will she
take that si? She’s taken it! Thank God!” And without noticing that he was
singing, to strengthen the si he sung a second, a third below the high note. “Ah,
God! How fine! Did I really take it? How fortunate!” he thought.
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest in
Rostóv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else in the world
and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and Dólokhov, and words
of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy....”
CHAPTER XVI
It was long since Rostóv had felt such enjoyment from music as he did that
day. But no sooner had Natásha finished her barcarolle than reality again
presented itself. He got up without saying a word and went downstairs to his
own room. A quarter of an hour later the old count came in from his club,
cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing him drive up, went to meet him.
“Well—had a good time?” said the old count, smiling gaily and proudly at his
son.
Nicholas tried to say “Yes,” but could not: and he nearly burst into sobs. The
count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son’s condition.
“Ah, it can’t be avoided!” thought Nicholas, for the first and last time. And
suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him feel ashamed of himself, he
said, as if merely asking his father to let him have the carriage to drive to town:
“Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. I need
some money.”
“Dear me!” said his father, who was in a specially good humor. “I told you it
would not be enough. How much?”
“Very much,” said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless smile, for
which he was long unable to forgive himself, “I have lost a little, I mean a good
deal, a great deal—forty three thousand.”
“What! To whom?... Nonsense!” cried the count, suddenly reddening with an
apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.
“I promised to pay tomorrow,” said Nicholas.
“Well!...” said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking helplessly on
the sofa.
“It can’t be helped! It happens to everyone!” said the son, with a bold, free,
and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a worthless scoundrel
whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He longed to kiss his father’s
hands and kneel to beg his forgiveness, but said, in a careless and even rude
voice, that it happens to everyone!
The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son’s words and began
bustlingly searching for something.
“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to raise... happens
to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?”
And with a furtive glance at his son’s face, the count went out of the room....
Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all expected this.
“Papa! Pa-pa!” he called after him, sobbing, “forgive me!” And seizing his
father’s hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.
While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and daughter
were having one not less important. Natásha came running to her mother, quite
excited.
“Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me...”
“Made what?”
“Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!” she exclaimed.
The countess did not believe her ears. Denísov had proposed. To whom? To
this chit of a girl, Natásha, who not so long ago was playing with dolls and who
was still having lessons.
“Don’t, Natásha! What nonsense!” she said, hoping it was a joke.
“Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact,” said Natásha indignantly. “I
come to ask you what to do, and you call it ‘nonsense!’”
The countess shrugged her shoulders.
“If it is true that Monsieur Denísov has made you a proposal, tell him he is a
fool, that’s all!”
“No, he’s not a fool!” replied Natásha indignantly and seriously.
“Well then, what do you want? You’re all in love nowadays. Well, if you are
in love, marry him!” said the countess, with a laugh of annoyance. “Good luck to
you!”
“No, Mamma, I’m not in love with him, I suppose I’m not in love with him.”
“Well then, tell him so.”
“Mamma, are you cross? Don’t be cross, dear! Is it my fault?”
“No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?” said the
countess smiling.
“No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It’s all very well for you,”
said Natásha, with a responsive smile. “You should have seen how he said it! I
know he did not mean to say it, but it came out accidently.”
“Well, all the same, you must refuse him.”
“No, I mustn’t. I am so sorry for him! He’s so nice.”
“Well then, accept his offer. It’s high time for you to be married,” answered
the countess sharply and sarcastically.
“No, Mamma, but I’m so sorry for him. I don’t know how I’m to say it.”
“And there’s nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,” said the
countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this little Natásha as
grown up.
“No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you’ll listen at the door,”
and Natásha ran across the drawing room to the dancing hall, where Denísov
was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord with his face in his hands.
He jumped up at the sound of her light step.
“Nataly,” he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, “decide my fate. It is in
your hands.”
“Vasíli Dmítrich, I’m so sorry for you!... No, but you are so nice... but it won’t
do...not that... but as a friend, I shall always love you.”
Denísov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did not
understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this instant, they heard the
quick rustle of the countess’ dress. She came up to them.
“Vasíli Dmítrich, I thank you for the honor,” she said, with an embarrassed
voice, though it sounded severe to Denísov—“but my daughter is so young, and
I thought that, as my son’s friend, you would have addressed yourself first to me.
In that case you would not have obliged me to give this refusal.”
“Countess...” said Denísov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He tried to
say more, but faltered.
Natásha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She began to sob
aloud.
“Countess, I have done w’ong,” Denísov went on in an unsteady voice, “but
believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I would give my
life twice over...” He looked at the countess, and seeing her severe face said:
“Well, good-by, Countess,” and kissing her hand, he left the room with quick
resolute strides, without looking at Natásha.
Next day Rostóv saw Denísov off. He did not wish to stay another day in
Moscow. All Denísov’s Moscow friends gave him a farewell entertainment at the
gypsies’, with the result that he had no recollection of how he was put in the
sleigh or of the first three stages of his journey.
After Denísov’s departure, Rostóv spent another fortnight in Moscow, without
going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could not at once raise,
and he spent most of his time in the girls’ room.
Sónya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she wanted
to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her love him all the
more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of her.
He filled the girls’ albums with verses and music, and having at last sent
Dólokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and received his receipt, he left
at the end of November, without taking leave of any of his acquaintances, to
overtake his regiment which was already in Poland.
BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
CHAPTER I
After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the Torzhók
post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster would not supply
them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing, he lay down on the leather
sofa in front of a round table, put his big feet in their overboots on the table, and
began to reflect.
“Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and tea?”
asked his valet.
Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had begun to
think of the last station and was still pondering on the same question—one so
important that he took no notice of what went on around him. Not only was he
indifferent as to whether he got to Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he
secured accommodation at this station, but compared to the thoughts that now
occupied him it was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few
hours or for the rest of his life.
The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling Torzhók
embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without changing his
careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his spectacles unable to understand
what they wanted or how they could go on living without having solved the
problems that so absorbed him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts
ever since the day he returned from Sokólniki after the duel and had spent that
first agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey, they
seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about, he always
returned to these same questions which he could not solve and yet could not
cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the chief screw which held his life
together were stripped, so that the screw could not get in or out, but went on
turning uselessly in the same place.
The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his excellency to wait
only two hours, when, come what might, he would let his excellency have the
courier horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted to get more money
from the traveler.
“Is this good or bad?” Pierre asked himself. “It is good for me, bad for another
traveler, and for himself it’s unavoidable, because he needs money for food; the
man said an officer had once given him a thrashing for letting a private traveler
have the courier horses. But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as
quickly as possible. And I,” continued Pierre, “shot Dólokhov because I
considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they considered
him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who executed him—also for
some reason. What is bad? What is good? What should one love and what hate?
What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and what is death? What
power governs all?”
There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a
logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: “You’ll die and all
will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.” But dying was also dreadful.
The Torzhók peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her wares,
especially a pair of goatskin slippers. “I have hundreds of rubles I don’t know
what to do with, and she stands in her tattered cloak looking timidly at me,” he
thought. “And what does she want the money for? As if that money could add a
hair’s breadth to happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make
her or me less a prey to evil and death?—death which ends all and must come
today or tomorrow—at any rate, in an instant as compared with eternity.” And
again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread, and again it turned uselessly
in the same place.
His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters, by Madame de
Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous struggles of a certain
Emilie de Mansfeld. “And why did she resist her seducer when she loved him?”
he thought. “God could not have put into her heart an impulse that was against
His will. My wife—as she once was—did not struggle, and perhaps she was
right. Nothing has been found out, nothing discovered,” Pierre again said to
himself. “All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of
human wisdom.”
Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and repellent.
Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre found a kind of
tantalizing satisfaction.
“I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this gentleman,” said
the postmaster, entering the room followed by another traveler, also detained for
lack of horses.
The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old man,
with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite grayish color.
Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a bed that had
been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the newcomer, who, with a
gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off his wraps with the aid of his
servant, and not looking at Pierre. With a pair of felt boots on his thin bony legs,
and keeping on a worn, nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down
on the sofa, leaned back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped
hair, and looked at Bezúkhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating expression of
that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to the stranger, but by the time he
had made up his mind to ask him a question about the roads, the traveler had
closed his eyes. His shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of
them Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a death’s head.
The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as it seemed to Pierre, sunk in
profound and calm meditation. His servant was also a yellow, wrinkled old man,
without beard or mustache, evidently not because he was shaven but because
they had never grown. This active old servant was unpacking the traveler’s
canteen and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything
was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled a tumbler with
tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to whom he passed it. Pierre
began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the need, even the inevitability, of
entering into conversation with this stranger.
The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down, * with an
unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be wanted.
* To indicate he did not want more tea.
After that Anna Pávlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the King of
Prussia, in order to draw Borís into the conversation.
Borís listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his turn, but
managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his neighbor, the beautiful
Hélène, whose eyes several times met those of the handsome young aide-de-
camp with a smile.
Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pávlovna very naturally asked Borís
to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state he found the Prussian
army. Borís, speaking with deliberation, told them in pure, correct French many
interesting details about the armies and the court, carefully abstaining from
expressing an opinion of his own about the facts he was recounting. For some
time he engrossed the general attention, and Anna Pávlovna felt that the novelty
she had served up was received with pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest
attention of all to Borís’ narrative was shown by Hélène. She asked him several
questions about his journey and seemed greatly interested in the state of the
Prussian army. As soon as he had finished she turned to him with her usual
smile.
“You absolutely must come and see me,” she said in a tone that implied that,
for certain considerations he could not know of, this was absolutely necessary.
“On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure.”
Borís promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a conversation with
her, when Anna Pávlovna called him away on the pretext that her aunt wished to
hear him.
“You know her husband, of course?” said Anna Pávlovna, closing her eyes
and indicating Hélène with a sorrowful gesture. “Ah, she is such an unfortunate
and charming woman! Don’t mention him before her—please don’t! It is too
painful for her!”
CHAPTER VII
When Borís and Anna Pávlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte had
the ear of the company.
Bending forward in his armchair he said: “Le Roi de Prusse!” and having said
this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.
“Le Roi de Prusse?” Hippolyte said interrogatively, again laughing, and then
calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pávlovna waited for him to go
on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more she began to tell of how at
Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.
“It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I...” she began, but Hippolyte
interrupted her with the words: “Le Roi de Prusse...” and again, as soon as all
turned toward him, excused himself and said no more.
Anna Pávlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte’s friend, addressed him firmly.
“Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?”
Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
“Oh, it’s nothing. I only wished to say...” (he wanted to repeat a joke he had
heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that evening to get in) “I only
wished to say that we are wrong to fight pour le Roi de Prusse!”
Borís smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or
appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody laughed.
“Your joke is too bad, it’s witty but unjust,” said Anna Pávlovna, shaking her
little shriveled finger at him.
“We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right principles. Oh, that
wicked Prince Hippolyte!” she said.
The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on the political
news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the evening when the
rewards bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.
“You know N— N— received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?” said
“the man of profound intellect.” “Why shouldn’t S— S— get the same
distinction?”
“Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor’s portrait is a reward but not a
distinction,” said the diplomatist—“a gift, rather.”
“There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg.”
“It’s impossible,” replied another.
“Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter....”
When everybody rose to go, Hélène who had spoken very little all the evening
again turned to Borís, asking him in a tone of caressing significant command to
come to her on Tuesday.
“It is of great importance to me,” she said, turning with a smile toward Anna
Pávlovna, and Anna Pávlovna, with the same sad smile with which she spoke of
her exalted patroness, supported Hélène’s wish.
It seemed as if from some words Borís had spoken that evening about the
Prussian army, Hélène had suddenly found it necessary to see him. She seemed
to promise to explain that necessity to him when he came on Tuesday.
But on Tuesday evening, having come to Hélène’s splendid salon, Borís
received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for him to come.
There were other guests and the countess talked little to him, and only as he
kissed her hand on taking leave said unexpectedly and in a whisper, with a
strangely unsmiling face: “Come to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must
come.... Come!”
During that stay in Petersburg, Borís became an intimate in the countess’
house.
CHAPTER VIII
The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier. Everywhere one
heard curses on Bonaparte, “the enemy of mankind.” Militiamen and recruits
were being enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of war came contradictory
news, false as usual and therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince
Bolkónski, Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.
In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief then
appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout Russia. Despite the
weakness of age, which had become particularly noticeable since the time when
he thought his son had been killed, he did not think it right to refuse a duty to
which he had been appointed by the Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity
for action gave him new energy and strength. He was continually traveling
through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment of
his duties, severe to cruel with his subordinates, and went into everything down
to the minutest details himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in
mathematics from her father, and when the old prince was at home went to his
study with the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called
him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse Sávishna in
the late princess’ rooms and Princess Mary spent most of the day in the nursery,
taking a mother’s place to her little nephew as best she could. Mademoiselle
Bourienne, too, seemed passionately fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often
deprived herself to give her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel—as
she called her nephew—and playing with him.
Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the tomb of
the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble monument brought from Italy,
representing an angel with outspread wings ready to fly upwards. The angel’s
upper lip was slightly raised as though about to smile, and once on coming out of
the chapel Prince Andrew and Princess Mary admitted to one another that the
angel’s face reminded them strangely of the little princess. But what was still
stranger, though of this Prince Andrew said nothing to his sister, was that in the
expression the sculptor had happened to give the angel’s face, Prince Andrew
read the same mild reproach he had read on the face of his dead wife: “Ah, why
have you done this to me?”
Soon after Prince Andrew’s return the old prince made over to him a large
estate, Boguchárovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald Hills. Partly because of
the depressing memories associated with Bald Hills, partly because Prince
Andrew did not always feel equal to bearing with his father’s peculiarities, and
partly because he needed solitude, Prince Andrew made use of Boguchárovo,
began building and spent most of his time there.
After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved not to
continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and everybody
had to serve, he took a post under his father in the recruitment so as to avoid
active service. The old prince and his son seemed to have changed roles since
the campaign of 1805. The old man, roused by activity, expected the best results
from the new campaign, while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in
the war and secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.
On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits. Prince
Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father’s absence. Little
Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman who had driven the old
prince to town returned bringing papers and letters for Prince Andrew.
Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the letters to
Princess Mary’s apartments, but did not find him there. He was told that the
prince had gone to the nursery.
“If you please, your excellency, Pétrusha has brought some papers,” said one
of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting on a child’s little chair
while, frowning and with trembling hands, he poured drops from a medicine
bottle into a wineglass half full of water.
“What is it?” he said crossly, and, his hand shaking unintentionally, he poured
too many drops into the glass. He threw the mixture onto the floor and asked for
some more water. The maid brought it.
There were in the room a child’s cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a table, a
child’s table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew was sitting. The
curtains were drawn, and a single candle was burning on the table, screened by a
bound music book so that the light did not fall on the cot.
“My dear,” said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside the cot
where she was standing, “better wait a bit... later...”
“Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things off—and
this is what comes of it!” said Prince Andrew in an exasperated whisper,
evidently meaning to wound his sister.
“My dear, really... it’s better not to wake him... he’s asleep,” said the princess
in a tone of entreaty.
Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed, wineglass in
hand.
“Perhaps we’d really better not wake him,” he said hesitating.
“As you please... really... I think so... but as you please,” said Princess Mary,
evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had prevailed. She drew her
brother’s attention to the maid who was calling him in a whisper.
It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the boy who
was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their household doctor and
expecting another for whom they had sent to town, they had been trying first one
remedy and then another. Worn out by sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their
burden of sorrow on one another and reproached and disputed with each other.
“Pétrusha has come with papers from your father,” whispered the maid.
Prince Andrew went out.
“Devil take them!” he muttered, and after listening to the verbal instructions
his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his father’s letter, he
returned to the nursery.
“Well?” he asked.
“Still the same. Wait, for heaven’s sake. Karl Ivánich always says that sleep is
more important than anything,” whispered Princess Mary with a sigh.
Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.
“Confound you and your Karl Ivánich!” He took the glass with the drops and
again went up to the cot.
“Andrew, don’t!” said Princess Mary.
But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his eyes, and
stooped glass in hand over the infant.
“But I wish it,” he said. “I beg you—give it him!”
Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively and
calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed hoarsely. Prince
Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and sat down on a sofa in the
next room.
He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them mechanically he began
reading. The old prince, now and then using abbreviations, wrote in his large
elongated hand on blue paper as follows:
Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful news—if it’s
not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete victory over Buonaparte
at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing, and the rewards sent to the army
are innumerable. Though he is a German—I congratulate him! I can’t make out
what the commander at Kórchevo—a certain Khandrikóv—is up to; till now the
additional men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and
say I’ll have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have received
another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from Pétenka—he took part in it
—and it’s all true. When mischief-makers don’t meddle even a German beats
Buonaparte. He is said to be fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to
Kórchevo without delay and carry out instructions!
Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It was a closely
written letter of two sheets from Bilíbin. He folded it up without reading it and
reread his father’s letter, ending with the words: “Gallop off to Kórchevo and
carry out instructions!”
“No, pardon me, I won’t go now till the child is better,” thought he, going to
the door and looking into the nursery.
Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the baby.
“Ah yes, and what else did he say that’s unpleasant?” thought Prince Andrew,
recalling his father’s letter. “Yes, we have gained a victory over Bonaparte, just
when I’m not serving. Yes, yes, he’s always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let
him!” And he began reading Bilíbin’s letter which was written in French. He
read without understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment,
what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all else.
CHAPTER IX
Bilíbin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and though he
wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms, he described the
whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and self-derision genuinely Russian.
Bilíbin wrote that the obligation of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he
was happy to have in Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could
pour out the bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the
army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at Preussisch-
Eylau.
“Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz,” wrote Bilíbin, “as you
know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I have certainly acquired a
taste for war, and it is just as well for me; what I have seen during these last
three months is incredible.
“I begin ab ovo. ‘The enemy of the human race,’ as you know, attacks the
Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only betrayed us three
times in three years. We take up their cause, but it turns out that ‘the enemy of
the human race’ pays no heed to our fine speeches and in his rude and savage
way throws himself on the Prussians without giving them time to finish the
parade they had begun, and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to
smithereens and installs himself in the palace at Potsdam.
“‘I most ardently desire,’ writes the King of Prussia to Bonaparte, ‘that Your
Majesty should be received and treated in my palace in a manner agreeable to
yourself, and in so far as circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all steps
to that end. May I have succeeded!’ The Prussian generals pride themselves on
being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first demand.
“The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the King of
Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... All this is absolutely
true.
“In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude, it turns out
that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more, in war on our own
frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have everything in perfect order,
only one little thing is lacking, namely, a commander in chief. As it was
considered that the Austerlitz success might have been more decisive had the
commander in chief not been so young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and
of Prozoróvski and Kámenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,
Suvórov-like, in a kibítka, and is received with acclamations of joy and triumph.
“On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails are taken to
the field marshal’s room, for he likes to do everything himself. I am called in to
help sort the letters and take those meant for us. The field marshal looks on and
waits for letters addressed to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field
marshal grows impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters from the
Emperor to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts into one of his wild
furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes the letters, opens them, and
reads those from the Emperor addressed to others. ‘Ah! So that’s the way they
treat me! No confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep an eye on me! Very well
then! Get along with you!’ So he writes the famous order of the day to General
Bennigsen:
“‘I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the army.
You have brought your army corps to Pultúsk, routed: here it is exposed, and
without fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as you yourself reported
to Count Buxhöwden yesterday, you must think of retreating to our frontier—
which do today.’
“‘From all my riding,’ he writes to the Emperor, ‘I have got a saddle sore
which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents my riding and
commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the command to the general
next in seniority, Count Buxhöwden, having sent him my whole staff and all that
belongs to it, advising him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the
interior of Prussia, for only one day’s ration of bread remains, and in some
regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders, Ostermann and
Sedmorétzki, and all that the peasants had has been eaten up. I myself will
remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly
submit my report, with the information that if the army remains in its present
bivouac another fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring.
“‘Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is already in any
case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great and glorious task for which
he was chosen. I shall await your most gracious permission here in hospital, that
I may not have to play the part of a secretary rather than commander in the army.
My removal from the army does not produce the slightest stir—a blind man has
left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.’
“The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all, isn’t it
logical?
“This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly interesting
and entertaining. After the field marshal’s departure it appears that we are within
sight of the enemy and must give battle. Buxhöwden is commander in chief by
seniority, but General Bennigsen does not quite see it; more particularly as it is
he and his corps who are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the
opportunity to fight a battle ‘on his own hand’ as the Germans say. He does so.
This is the battle of Pultúsk, which is considered a great victory but in my
opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as you know, have a very bad way
of deciding whether a battle was won or lost. Those who retreat after a battle
have lost it is what we say; and according to that it is we who lost the battle of
Pultúsk. In short, we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg with
news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive from Petersburg the
post of commander in chief as a reward for his victory, does not give up the
command of the army to General Buxhöwden. During this interregnum we begin
a very original and interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it
should be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General Buxhöwden
who by right of seniority should be our chief. So energetically do we pursue this
aim that after crossing an unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate
ourselves from our enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhöwden.
General Buxhöwden was all but attacked and captured by a superior enemy force
as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to escape him. Buxhöwden
pursues us—we scuttle. He hardly crosses the river to our side before we recross
to the other. At last our enemy, Buxhöwden, catches us and attacks. Both
generals are angry, and the result is a challenge on Buxhöwden’s part and an
epileptic fit on Bennigsen’s. But at the critical moment the courier who carried
the news of our victory at Pultúsk to Petersburg returns bringing our
appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhöwden, is
vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But as it
turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us—namely the
Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat, biscuits, fodder, and
whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads impassable. The Orthodox begin
looting, and in a way of which our last campaign can give you no idea. Half the
regiments form bands and scour the countryside and put everything to fire and
sword. The inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick, and
famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our headquarters, and
the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to disperse them. During one of
these attacks they carried off my empty portmanteau and my dressing gown. The
Emperor proposes to give all commanders of divisions the right to shoot
marauders, but I much fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other.”
At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while, in spite of
himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust Bilíbin), what he had read
began to interest him more and more. When he had read thus far, he crumpled
the letter up and threw it away. It was not what he had read that vexed him, but
the fact that the life out there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He
shut his eyes, rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what he
had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he thought
he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized with alarm lest
something should have happened to the child while he was reading the letter. He
went on tiptoe to the nursery door and opened it.
Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from him with a
scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the cot.
“My dear,” he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind him.
As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was seized by
an unreasoning panic—it occurred to him that the child was dead. All that he
saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.
“All is over,” he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He went
to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find it empty and that the nurse had
been hiding the dead baby. He drew the curtain aside and for some time his
frightened, restless eyes could not find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy
had tossed about till he lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow,
and was smacking his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.
Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had already lost
him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught him, tried with his lips
whether the child was still feverish. The soft forehead was moist. Prince Andrew
touched the head with his hand; even the hair was wet, so profusely had the child
perspired. He was not dead, but evidently the crisis was over and he was
convalescent. Prince Andrew longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his
heart, this helpless little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him, gazing
at his head and at the little arms and legs which showed under the blanket. He
heard a rustle behind him and a shadow appeared under the curtain of the cot. He
did not look round, but still gazing at the infant’s face listened to his regular
breathing. The dark shadow was Princess Mary, who had come up to the cot with
noiseless steps, lifted the curtain, and dropped it again behind her. Prince
Andrew recognized her without looking and held out his hand to her. She
pressed it.
“He has perspired,” said Prince Andrew.
“I was coming to tell you so.”
The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his forehead against
the pillow.
Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain her
luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy that were in
them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him, slightly catching the curtain
of the cot. Each made the other a warning gesture and stood still in the dim light
beneath the curtain as if not wishing to leave that seclusion where they three
were shut off from all the world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away,
ruffling his hair against the muslin of the curtain.
“Yes, this is the one thing left me now,” he said with a sigh.
CHAPTER X
Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went to the Kiev
province, where he had the greatest number of serfs, taking with him full
directions which he had written down for his own guidance as to what he should
do on his estates.
When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office and
explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that steps would be
taken immediately to free his serfs—and that till then they were not to be
overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies were not to be sent
to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs, punishments were to be
admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be
established on all the estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate
foremen among them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that
the young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of
money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre’s lisp and the new
words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the master
talked, while the cleverest among them, including the chief steward, understood
from this speech how they could best handle the master for their own ends.
The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre’s intentions, but
remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go into the general
state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.
Despite Count Bezúkhov’s enormous wealth, since he had come into an
income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a year, Pierre
felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him an allowance of ten
thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the following budget:
About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank, about
30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town house, and the
allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was given in pensions and the
same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was sent to the countess; about
70,000 went for interest on debts. The building of a new church, previously
begun, had cost about 10,000 in each of the last two years, and he did not know
how the rest, about 100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every year he was
obliged to borrow. Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling him of
fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories and workshops.
So the first task Pierre had to face was one for which he had very little aptitude
or inclination—practical business.
He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he felt that
this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these consultations were detached
from real affairs and did not link up with them or make them move. On the one
hand, the chief steward put the state of things to him in the very worst light,
pointing out the necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new activities
with serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand, Pierre
demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs, which the steward met
by showing the necessity of first paying off the loans from the Land Bank, and
the consequent impossibility of a speedy emancipation.
The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested selling the
forests in the province of Kostromá, the land lower down the river, and the
Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all of which operations according to
him were connected with such complicated measures—the removal of
injunctions, petitions, permits, and so on—that Pierre became quite bewildered
and only replied:
“Yes, yes, do so.”
Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled him to
attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only tried to pretend to
the steward that he was attending to it. The steward for his part tried to pretend
to the count that he considered these consultations very valuable for the
proprietor and troublesome to himself.
In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened to make his
acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer, the largest landowner
of the province. Temptations to Pierre’s greatest weakness—the one to which he
had confessed when admitted to the Lodge—were so strong that he could not
resist them. Again whole days, weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a
rush and were as much occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches, and
balls, giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg. Instead of the new life
he had hoped to lead he still lived the old life, only in new surroundings.
Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not fulfill the
one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of moral life, and that of the
seven virtues he lacked two—morality and the love of death. He consoled
himself with the thought that he fulfilled another of the precepts—that of
reforming the human race—and had other virtues—love of his neighbor, and
especially generosity.
In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way he
intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his orders had been
carried out and in what state were the serfs whom God had entrusted to his care
and whom he intended to benefit.
The chief steward, who considered the young count’s attempts almost insane
—unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the serfs—made some
concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation of the serfs as impracticable,
he arranged for the erection of large buildings—schools, hospitals, and asylums
—on all the estates before the master arrived. Everywhere preparations were
made not for ceremonious welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but
for just such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and the bread and
salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of his master, would touch
and delude him.
The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna carriage, and
the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on Pierre. The estates he had
not before visited were each more picturesque than the other; the serfs
everywhere seemed thriving and touchingly grateful for the benefits conferred
on them. Everywhere were receptions, which though they embarrassed Pierre
awakened a joyful feeling in the depth of his heart. In one place the peasants
presented him with bread and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul,
asking permission, as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits he had conferred
on them, to build a new chantry to the church at their own expense in honor of
Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In another place the women with infants in
arms met him to thank him for releasing them from hard work. On a third estate
the priest, bearing a cross, came to meet him surrounded by children whom, by
the count’s generosity, he was instructing in reading, writing, and religion. On all
his estates Pierre saw with his own eyes brick buildings erected or in course of
erection, all on one plan, for hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were
soon to be opened. Everywhere he saw the stewards’ accounts, according to
which the serfs’ manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the touching
thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue coats.
What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him with
bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter and Paul was a
market village where a fair was held on St. Peter’s day, and that the richest
peasants (who formed the deputation) had begun the chantry long before, but
that nine tenths of the peasants in that villages were in a state of the greatest
poverty. He did not know that since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to
work on his land, they did still harder work on their own land. He did not know
that the priest who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by his
exactions, and that the pupils’ parents wept at having to let him take their
children and secured their release by heavy payments. He did not know that the
brick buildings, built to plan, were being built by serfs whose manorial labor was
thus increased, though lessened on paper. He did not know that where the
steward had shown him in the accounts that the serfs’ payments had been
diminished by a third, their obligatory manorial work had been increased by a
half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his estates and quite recovered
the philanthropic mood in which he had left Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic
letters to his “brother-instructor” as he called the Grand Master.
“How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,” thought Pierre,
“and how little attention we pay to it!”
He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at receiving it.
This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do for these simple,
kindly people.
The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly through
the naïve and intelligent count and played with him as with a toy, seeing the
effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre, pressed him still harder with
proofs of the impossibility and above all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who
were quite happy as it was.
Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be difficult to
imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would happen to them
when they were free, but he insisted, though reluctantly, on what he thought
right. The steward promised to do all in his power to carry out the count’s
wishes, seeing clearly that not only would the count never be able to find out
whether all measures had been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to
release them from the Land Bank, but would probably never even inquire and
would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing empty and that
the serfs continued to give in money and work all that other people’s serfs gave
—that is to say, all that could be got out of them.
CHAPTER XI
Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest state of
mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of visiting his friend
Bolkónski, whom he had not seen for two years.
Boguchárovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among fields and
forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The house lay behind a
newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and with banks still bare of grass.
It was at the end of a village that stretched along the highroad in the midst of a
young copse in which were a few fir trees.
The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, a bathhouse,
a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular façade still in course of
construction. Round the house was a garden newly laid out. The fences and gates
were new and solid; two fire pumps and a water cart, painted green, stood in a
shed; the paths were straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails.
Everything bore an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic
serfs Pierre met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a
small newly built lodge close to the pond. Antón, a man who had looked after
Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, said that the
prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little anteroom.
Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house after the
brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend in Petersburg.
He quickly entered the small reception room with its still-unplastered wooden
walls redolent of pine, and would have gone farther, but Antón ran ahead on
tiptoe and knocked at a door.
“Well, what is it?” came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
“A visitor,” answered Antón.
“Ask him to wait,” and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed back.
Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to face with
Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre embraced him
and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek and looked at him
closely.
“Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad,” said Prince Andrew.
Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with surprise. He was
struck by the change in him. His words were kindly and there was a smile on his
lips and face, but his eyes were dull and lifeless and in spite of his evident wish
to do so he could not give them a joyous and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had
grown thinner, paler, and more manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged
Pierre till he got used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow indicating
prolonged concentration on some one thought.
As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged separation, it was
long before their conversation could settle on anything. They put questions and
gave brief replies about things they knew ought to be talked over at length. At
last the conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first lightly
touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre’s journeys and
occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and despondency which
Pierre had noticed in his friend’s look was now still more clearly expressed in
the smile with which he listened to Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful
animation of the past or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked
to sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter began to
feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of
happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew’s presence. He was ashamed to express
his new Masonic views, which had been particularly revived and strengthened
by his late tour. He checked himself, fearing to seem naïve, yet he felt an
irresistible desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a quite
different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.
“I can’t tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly know
myself again.”
“Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then,” said Prince Andrew.
“Well, and you? What are your plans?”
“Plans!” repeated Prince Andrew ironically. “My plans?” he said, as if
astonished at the word. “Well, you see, I’m building. I mean to settle here
altogether next year....”
Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew’s face, which had
grown much older.
“No, I meant to ask...” Pierre began, but Prince Andrew interrupted him.
“But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your travels and all you
have been doing on your estates.”
Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as far as
possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had been made. Prince
Andrew several times prompted Pierre’s story of what he had been doing, as
though it were all an old-time story, and he listened not only without interest but
even as if ashamed of what Pierre was telling him.
Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend’s company and at
last became silent.
“I’ll tell you what, my dear fellow,” said Prince Andrew, who evidently also
felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, “I am only bivouacking here and
have just come to look round. I am going back to my sister today. I will
introduce you to her. But of course you know her already,” he said, evidently
trying to entertain a visitor with whom he now found nothing in common. “We
will go after dinner. And would you now like to look round my place?”
They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the political news
and common acquaintances like people who do not know each other intimately.
Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and interest only of the new
homestead he was constructing and its buildings, but even here, while on the
scaffolding, in the midst of a talk explaining the future arrangements of the
house, he interrupted himself:
“However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and then we’ll set
off.”
At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre’s marriage.
“I was very much surprised when I heard of it,” said Prince Andrew.
Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said hurriedly: “I
will tell you some time how it all happened. But you know it is all over, and
forever.”
“Forever?” said Prince Andrew. “Nothing’s forever.”
“But you know how it all ended, don’t you? You heard of the duel?”
“And so you had to go through that too!”
“One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man,” said Pierre.
“Why so?” asked Prince Andrew. “To kill a vicious dog is a very good thing
really.”
“No, to kill a man is bad—wrong.”
“Why is it wrong?” urged Prince Andrew. “It is not given to man to know
what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will err, and in
nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong.”
“What does harm to another is wrong,” said Pierre, feeling with pleasure that
for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was roused, had begun to talk,
and wanted to express what had brought him to his present state.
“And who has told you what is bad for another man?” he asked.
“Bad! Bad!” exclaimed Pierre. “We all know what is bad for ourselves.”
“Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is something I
cannot inflict on others,” said Prince Andrew, growing more and more animated
and evidently wishing to express his new outlook to Pierre. He spoke in French.
“I only know two very real evils in life: remorse and illness. The only good is
the absence of those evils. To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my
whole philosophy now.”
“And love of one’s neighbor, and self-sacrifice?” began Pierre. “No, I can’t
agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to have to repent is not
enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself and ruined my life. And only now
when I am living, or at least trying” (Pierre’s modesty made him correct himself)
“to live for others, only now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I
shall not agree with you, and you do not really believe what you are saying.”
Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.
“When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you’ll get on with her,” he said.
“Perhaps you are right for yourself,” he added after a short pause, “but everyone
lives in his own way. You lived for yourself and say you nearly ruined your life
and only found happiness when you began living for others. I experienced just
the reverse. I lived for glory.—And after all what is glory? The same love of
others, a desire to do something for them, a desire for their approval.—So I lived
for others, and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I have become calmer
since I began to live only for myself.”
“But what do you mean by living only for yourself?” asked Pierre, growing
excited. “What about your son, your sister, and your father?”
“But that’s just the same as myself—they are not others,” explained Prince
Andrew. “The others, one’s neighbors, le prochain, as you and Princess Mary
call it, are the chief source of all error and evil. Le prochain—your Kiev peasants
to whom you want to do good.”
And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He evidently
wished to draw him on.
“You are joking,” replied Pierre, growing more and more excited. “What error
or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even doing a little—though I
did very little and did it very badly? What evil can there be in it if unfortunate
people, our serfs, people like ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea
of God and truth beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now
instructed in a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying of disease
without help while material assistance could so easily be rendered, and I
supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum for the aged? And is it not
a palpable, unquestionable good if a peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no
rest day or night and I give them rest and leisure?” said Pierre, hurrying and
lisping. “And I have done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have
done something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a good
action, and more than that, you can’t make me believe that you do not think so
yourself. And the main thing is,” he continued, “that I know, and know for
certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is the only sure happiness in life.”
“Yes, if you put it like that it’s quite a different matter,” said Prince Andrew. “I
build a house and lay out a garden, and you build hospitals. The one and the
other may serve as a pastime. But what’s right and what’s good must be judged
by one who knows all, but not by us. Well, you want an argument,” he added,
“come on then.”
They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which served as a
veranda.
“Come, let’s argue then,” said Prince Andrew, “You talk of schools,” he went
on, crooking a finger, “education and so forth; that is, you want to raise him”
(pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap) “from his animal
condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal
happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to
deprive him of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving
him my means. Then you say, ‘lighten his toil.’ But as I see it, physical labor is
as essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as mental activity is to
you or me. You can’t help thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning,
thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and
can’t help thinking, just as he can’t help plowing and mowing; if he didn’t, he
would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible
physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical
idleness, but would grow fat and die. The third thing—what else was it you
talked about?” and Prince Andrew crooked a third finger. “Ah, yes, hospitals,
medicine. He has a fit, he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him
up. He will drag about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years.
It would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being born and there
are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if you grudged losing a laborer—
that’s how I regard him—but you want to cure him from love of him. And he
does not want that. And besides, what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone!
Killed them, yes!” said he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.
Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that it was evident
he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he spoke readily and rapidly
like a man who has not talked for a long time. His glance became more animated
as his conclusions became more hopeless.
“Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!” said Pierre. “I don’t understand how one can
live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long ago, in Moscow and
when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so that I don’t live at all—
everything seems hateful to me... myself most of all. Then I don’t eat, don’t
wash... and how is it with you?...”
“Why not wash? That is not cleanly,” said Prince Andrew; “on the contrary
one must try to make one’s life as pleasant as possible. I’m alive, that is not my
fault, so I must live out my life as best I can without hurting others.”
“But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would sit without
moving, undertaking nothing....”
“Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do nothing, but here
on the one hand the local nobility have done me the honor to choose me to be
their marshal; it was all I could do to get out of it. They could not understand
that I have not the necessary qualifications for it—the kind of good-natured,
fussy shallowness necessary for the position. Then there’s this house, which
must be built in order to have a nook of one’s own in which to be quiet. And
now there’s this recruiting.”
“Why aren’t you serving in the army?”
“After Austerlitz!” said Prince Andrew gloomily. “No, thank you very much! I
have promised myself not to serve again in the active Russian army. And I won’t
—not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolénsk threatening Bald Hills—even
then I wouldn’t serve in the Russian army! Well, as I was saying,” he continued,
recovering his composure, “now there’s this recruiting. My father is chief in
command of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active service is to
serve under him.”
“Then you are serving?”
“I am.”
He paused a little while.
“And why do you serve?”
“Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men of his
time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he has too energetic a
character. He is so accustomed to unlimited power that he is terrible, and now he
has this authority of a commander in chief of the recruiting, granted by the
Emperor. If I had been two hours late a fortnight ago he would have had a
paymaster’s clerk at Yúkhnovna hanged,” said Prince Andrew with a smile. “So
I am serving because I alone have any influence with my father, and now and
then can save him from actions which would torment him afterwards.”
“Well, there you see!”
“Yes, but it is not as you imagine,” Prince Andrew continued. “I did not, and
do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who had stolen some
boots from the recruits; I should even have been very glad to see him hanged,
but I was sorry for my father—that again is for myself.”
Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered feverishly
while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there was no desire to do good
to his neighbor.
“There now, you wish to liberate your serfs,” he continued; “that is a very
good thing, but not for you—I don’t suppose you ever had anyone flogged or
sent to Siberia—and still less for your serfs. If they are beaten, flogged, or sent
to Siberia, I don’t suppose they are any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the
same animal life, and the stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as
before. But it is a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse
upon themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being able to
inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people I pity, and for their sake
I should like to liberate the serfs. You may not have seen, but I have seen, how
good men brought up in those traditions of unlimited power, in time when they
grow more irritable, become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot
restrain themselves and grow more and more miserable.”
Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking that
these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his father’s case.
He did not reply.
“So that’s what I’m sorry for—human dignity, peace of mind, purity, and not
the serfs’ backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you may, always remain
the same backs and foreheads.”
“No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you,” said Pierre.
CHAPTER XII
In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and drove to Bald
Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the silence now and then with
remarks which showed that he was in a good temper.
Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making in his
husbandry.
Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and apparently
immersed in his own thoughts.
He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did not
see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid, enlighten, and raise him. But
as soon as he thought of what he should say, he felt that Prince Andrew with one
word, one argument, would upset all his teaching, and he shrank from beginning,
afraid of exposing to possible ridicule what to him was precious and sacred.
“No, but why do you think so?” Pierre suddenly began, lowering his head and
looking like a bull about to charge, “why do you think so? You should not think
so.”
“Think? What about?” asked Prince Andrew with surprise.
“About life, about man’s destiny. It can’t be so. I myself thought like that, and
do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don’t smile. Freemasonry is not
a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it was: Freemasonry is the best
expression of the best, the eternal, aspects of humanity.”
And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince Andrew.
He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed from the bonds of
State and Church, a teaching of equality, brotherhood, and love.
“Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the rest is a
dream,” said Pierre. “Understand, my dear fellow, that outside this union all is
filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree with you that nothing is left for an
intelligent and good man but to live out his life, like you, merely trying not to
harm others. But make our fundamental convictions your own, join our
brotherhood, give yourself up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once
feel yourself, as I have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible chain the
beginning of which is hidden in heaven,” said Pierre.
Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence to Pierre’s
words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels prevented his catching
what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it, and by the peculiar glow that came
into Prince Andrew’s eyes and by his silence, Pierre saw that his words were not
in vain and that Prince Andrew would not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.
They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they had to
cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed on it, they also
stepped on the raft.
Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed silently at the
flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.
“Well, what do you think about it?” Pierre asked. “Why are you silent?”
“What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It’s all very well.... You say:
join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of life, the destiny of man,
and the laws which govern the world. But who are we? Men. How is it you know
everything? Why do I alone not see what you see? You see a reign of goodness
and truth on earth, but I don’t see it.”
Pierre interrupted him.
“Do you believe in a future life?” he asked.
“A future life?” Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no time to
reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as he knew Prince
Andrew’s former atheistic convictions.
“You say you can’t see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor could I,
and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the end of everything. On
earth, here on this earth” (Pierre pointed to the fields), “there is no truth, all is
false and evil; but in the universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of
truth, and we who are now the children of earth are—eternally—children of the
whole universe. Don’t I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast harmonious
whole? Don’t I feel that I form one link, one step, between the lower and higher
beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of beings in whom the Deity—the
Supreme Power if you prefer the term—is manifest? If I see, clearly see, that
ladder leading from plant to man, why should I suppose it breaks off at me and
does not go farther and farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing
vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always have existed. I
feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits, and that in this world there is
truth.”
“Yes, that is Herder’s theory,” said Prince Andrew, “but it is not that which
can convince me, dear friend—life and death are what convince. What convinces
is when one sees a being dear to one, bound up with one’s own life, before
whom one was to blame and had hoped to make it right” (Prince Andrew’s voice
trembled and he turned away), “and suddenly that being is seized with pain,
suffers, and ceases to exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I
believe there is.... That’s what convinces, that is what has convinced me,” said
Prince Andrew.
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Pierre, “isn’t that what I’m saying?”
“No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the necessity of a
future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with someone and all at once that
person vanishes there, into nowhere, and you yourself are left facing that abyss,
and look in. And I have looked in....”
“Well, that’s it then! You know that there is a there and there is a Someone?
There is the future life. The Someone is—God.”
Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long since been
taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The sun had sunk half below
the horizon and an evening frost was starring the puddles near the ferry, but
Pierre and Andrew, to the astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and
ferrymen, still stood on the raft and talked.
“If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man’s highest
happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we must love, and we
must believe that we live not only today on this scrap of earth, but have lived
and shall live forever, there, in the Whole,” said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.
Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening to Pierre, and
he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the sun gleaming on the blue
waters. There was perfect stillness. Pierre became silent. The raft had long since
stopped and only the waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince
Andrew felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre’s words,
whispering:
“It is true, believe it.”
He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at Pierre’s face,
flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his superior friend.
“Yes, if it only were so!” said Prince Andrew. “However, it is time to get on,”
he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at the sky to which Pierre had
pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he
had seen while lying on that battlefield; and something that had long been
slumbering, something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and
youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the customary
conditions of his life, but he knew that this feeling which he did not know how
to develop existed within him. His meeting with Pierre formed an epoch in
Prince Andrew’s life. Though outwardly he continued to live in the same old
way, inwardly he began a new life.
CHAPTER XIII
It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the front
entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the house, Prince
Andrew with a smile drew Pierre’s attention to a commotion going on at the
back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on her back, and a short,
long-haired, young man in a black garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing
the carriage driving up. Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking
round at the carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch.
“Those are Mary’s ‘God’s folk,’” said Prince Andrew. “They have mistaken us
for my father. This is the one matter in which she disobeys him. He orders these
pilgrims to be driven away, but she receives them.”
“But what are ‘God’s folk’?” asked Pierre.
Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet them,
and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was expected back soon.
The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any minute.
Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always kept in
perfect order and readiness for him in his father’s house; he himself went to the
nursery.
“Let us go and see my sister,” he said to Pierre when he returned. “I have not
found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her ‘God’s folk.’ It will serve her
right, she will be confused, but you will see her ‘God’s folk.’ It’s really very
curious.”
“What are ‘God’s folk’?” asked Pierre.
“Come, and you’ll see for yourself.”
Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her face when
they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before the icon stand, a
young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk’s cassock, sat on the
sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near them, in an armchair, sat a thin,
shriveled, old woman, with a meek expression on her childlike face.
“Andrew, why didn’t you warn me?” said the princess, with mild reproach, as
she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her chickens.
“Charmée de vous voir. Je suis très contente de vous voir,” * she said to
Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child, and now his
friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife, and above all his kindly,
simple face disposed her favorably toward him. She looked at him with her
beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to say, “I like you very much, but please don’t
laugh at my people.” After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.
* “Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you.”
“Ah, and Ivánushka is here too!” said Prince Andrew, glancing with a smile at
the young pilgrim.
“Andrew!” said Princess Mary, imploringly. “Il faut que vous sachiez que
c’est une femme,” * said Prince Andrew to Pierre.
“Andrew, au nom de Dieu!” *(2) Princess Mary repeated.
* “You must know that this is a woman.”
It was evident that Prince Andrew’s ironical tone toward the pilgrims and
Princess Mary’s helpless attempts to protect them were their customary long-
established relations on the matter.
“Mais, ma bonne amie,” said Prince Andrew, “vous devriez au contraire
m’être reconnaissante de ce que j’explique à Pierre votre intimité avec ce jeune
homme.” *
* “But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to
me for explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young
man.”
“Really?” said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and
seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him) into
Ivánushka’s face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about, looked round at
them all with crafty eyes.
Princess Mary’s embarrassment on her people’s account was quite
unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman, lowering her
eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had turned her cup upside down
and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside it, and sat quietly in her armchair,
though hoping to be offered another cup of tea. Ivánushka, sipping out of her
saucer, looked with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at the young men.
“Where have you been? To Kiev?” Prince Andrew asked the old woman.
“I have, good sir,” she answered garrulously. “Just at Christmastime I was
deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at the shrine of
the saint. And now I’m from Kolyázin, master, where a great and wonderful
blessing has been revealed.”
“And was Ivánushka with you?”
“I go by myself, benefactor,” said Ivánushka, trying to speak in a bass voice.
“I only came across Pelagéya in Yúkhnovo....”
Pelagéya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell what she had
seen.
“In Kolyázin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed.”
“What is it? Some new relics?” asked Prince Andrew.
“Andrew, do leave off,” said Princess Mary. “Don’t tell him, Pelagéya.”
“No... why not, my dear, why shouldn’t I? I like him. He is kind, he is one of
God’s chosen, he’s a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles, I remember. When
I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he’s one of God’s own and goes barefoot
summer and winter), he says, ‘Why are you not going to the right place? Go to
Kolyázin where a wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been
revealed.’ On hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went.”
All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones, drawing
in her breath.
“So I come, master, and the people say to me: ‘A great blessing has been
revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed Mother, the Holy
Virgin Mother of God.’...”
“All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards,” said Princess Mary, flushing.
“Let me ask her,” said Pierre. “Did you see it yourselves?” he inquired.
“Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the face like the
light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother’s cheek it drops and drops....”
“But, dear me, that must be a fraud!” said Pierre, naïvely, who had listened
attentively to the pilgrim.
“Oh, master, what are you saying?” exclaimed the horrified Pelagéya, turning
to Princess Mary for support.
“They impose on the people,” he repeated.
“Lord Jesus Christ!” exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing herself. “Oh,
don’t speak so, master! There was a general who did not believe, and said, ‘The
monks cheat,’ and as soon as he’d said it he went blind. And he dreamed that the
Holy Virgin Mother of the Kiev catacombs came to him and said, ‘Believe in me
and I will make you whole.’ So he begged: ‘Take me to her, take me to her.’ It’s
the real truth I’m telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought, quite blind,
straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and says, ‘Make me whole,’
says he, ‘and I’ll give thee what the Tsar bestowed on me.’ I saw it myself,
master, the star is fixed into the icon. Well, and what do you think? He received
his sight! It’s a sin to speak so. God will punish you,” she said admonishingly,
turning to Pierre.
“How did the star get into the icon?” Pierre asked.
“And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?” said Prince
Andrew, with a smile.
Pelagéya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.
“Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!” she began, her
pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. “Master, what have you said? God forgive
you!” And she crossed herself. “Lord forgive him! My dear, what does it
mean?...” she asked, turning to Princess Mary. She got up and, almost crying,
began to arrange her wallet. She evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have
accepted charity in a house where such things could be said, and was at the same
time sorry to have now to forgo the charity of this house.
“Now, why need you do it?” said Princess Mary. “Why did you come to
me?...”
“Come, Pelagéya, I was joking,” said Pierre. “Princesse, ma parole, je n’ai
pas voulu l’offenser. * I did not mean anything, I was only joking,” he said,
smiling shyly and trying to efface his offense. “It was all my fault, and Andrew
was only joking.”
* “Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her.”
Pelagéya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre’s face there was such a look of
sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now at her and now at
Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.
CHAPTER XIV
The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a long
account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his hands smelled of
incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks she knew let her have the
keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking some dried bread with her, had spent
two days in the catacombs with the saints. “I’d pray awhile to one, ponder
awhile, then go on to another. I’d sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the
relics, and there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don’t
want to come out, even into the light of heaven again.”
Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went out of the
room, and then, leaving “God’s folk” to finish their tea, Princess Mary took
Pierre into the drawing room.
“You are very kind,” she said to him.
“Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them so well and
have the greatest respect for them.”
Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.
“I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as of a
brother,” she said. “How do you find Andrew?” she added hurriedly, not giving
him time to reply to her affectionate words. “I am very anxious about him. His
health was better in the winter, but last spring his wound reopened and the doctor
said he ought to go away for a cure. And I am also very much afraid for him
spiritually. He has not a character like us women who, when we suffer, can weep
away our sorrows. He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in good
spirits, but that is the effect of your visit—he is not often like that. If you could
persuade him to go abroad. He needs activity, and this quiet regular life is very
bad for him. Others don’t notice it, but I see it.”
Toward ten o’clock the men servants rushed to the front door, hearing the bells
of the old prince’s carriage approaching. Prince Andrew and Pierre also went out
into the porch.
“Who’s that?” asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out of the
carriage.
“Ah! Very glad! Kiss me,” he said, having learned who the young stranger
was.
The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.
Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father’s study, found him
disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining that a time would come
when there would be no more wars. The old prince disputed it chaffingly, but
without getting angry.
“Drain the blood from men’s veins and put in water instead, then there will be
no more war! Old women’s nonsense—old women’s nonsense!” he repeated, but
still he patted Pierre affectionately on the shoulder, and then went up to the table
where Prince Andrew, evidently not wishing to join in the conversation, was
looking over the papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went
up to him and began to talk business.
“The marshal, a Count Rostóv, hasn’t sent half his contingent. He came to
town and wanted to invite me to dinner—I gave him a pretty dinner!... And
there, look at this.... Well, my boy,” the old prince went on, addressing his son
and patting Pierre on the shoulder. “A fine fellow—your friend—I like him! He
stirs me up. Another says clever things and one doesn’t care to listen, but this
one talks rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps I’ll
come and sit with you at supper. We’ll have another dispute. Make friends with
my little fool, Princess Mary,” he shouted after Pierre, through the door.
Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the strength and
charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm was not expressed so
much in his relations with him as with all his family and with the household.
With the stern old prince and the gentle, timid Princess Mary, though he had
scarcely known them, Pierre at once felt like an old friend. They were all fond of
him already. Not only Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with
the pilgrims, gave him her most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old “Prince
Nicholas” (as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and let himself be
taken in his arms, and Michael Ivánovich and Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at
him with pleasant smiles when he talked to the old prince.
The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre’s account. And
during the two days of the young man’s visit he was extremely kind to him and
told him to visit them again.
When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met together, they
began to express their opinions of him as people always do after a new
acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one said anything but what was
good of him.
CHAPTER XV
When returning from his leave, Rostóv felt, for the first time, how close was
the bond that united him to Denísov and the whole regiment.
On approaching it, Rostóv felt as he had done when approaching his home in
Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned uniform of his
regiment, when he recognized red-haired Deméntyev and saw the picket ropes of
the roan horses, when Lavrúshka gleefully shouted to his master, “The count has
come!” and Denísov, who had been asleep on his bed, ran all disheveled out of
the mud hut to embrace him, and the officers collected round to greet the new
arrival, Rostóv experienced the same feeling as when his mother, his father, and
his sister had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not
speak. The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and precious as
his parents’ house.
When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and had been
reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had gone out foraging,
when he had again entered into all the little interests of the regiment and felt
himself deprived of liberty and bound in one narrow, unchanging frame, he
experienced the same sense of peace, of moral support, and the same sense of
being at home here in his own place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But
here was none of all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not know his
right place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sónya with whom he
ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was no possibility of going
there or not going there; here there were not twenty-four hours in the day which
could be spent in such a variety of ways; there was not that innumerable crowd
of people of whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than another;
there were none of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his
father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dólokhov. Here, in the regiment,
all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided into two unequal parts:
one, our Pávlograd regiment; the other, all the rest. And the rest was no concern
of his. In the regiment, everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who
captain, who was a good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a
comrade. The canteenkeeper gave one credit, one’s pay came every four months,
there was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do nothing that was
considered bad in the Pávlograd regiment and, when given an order, to do what
was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered—and all would be well.
Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this regimental life,
Rostóv felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on lying down to rest. Life in the
regiment, during this campaign, was all the pleasanter for him, because, after his
loss to Dólokhov (for which, in spite of all his family’s efforts to console him, he
could not forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault by
serving, not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a perfectly first-
rate comrade and officer—in a word, a splendid man altogether, a thing which
seemed so difficult out in the world, but so possible in the regiment.
After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his parents in five
years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now resolved to take only two
thousand and leave the rest to repay the debt to his parents.
Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at Pultúsk and
Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It was awaiting the
Emperor’s arrival and the beginning of a new campaign.
The Pávlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had served
in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in Russia, and arrived
too late to take part in the first actions of the campaign. It had been neither at
Pultúsk nor at Preussisch-Eylau and, when it joined the army in the field in the
second half of the campaign, was attached to Plátov’s division.
Plátov’s division was acting independently of the main army. Several times
parts of the Pávlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the enemy, had taken
prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal Oudinot’s carriages. In April the
Pávlograds were stationed immovably for some weeks near a totally ruined and
deserted German village.
A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river broke, and the
roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the men nor fodder for
the horses had been issued. As no transports could arrive, the men dispersed
about the abandoned and deserted villages, searching for potatoes, but found few
even of these.
Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled—if any
remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be taken from
them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead of taking anything from
them, often gave them the last of their rations.
The Pávlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but had
lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the hospitals, death was so
certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the swelling that came from bad
food, preferred to remain on duty, and hardly able to drag their legs went to the
front rather than to the hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found a
plant just showing out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for some
reason, they called “Máshka’s sweet root.” It was very bitter, but they wandered
about the fields seeking it and dug it out with their sabers and ate it, though they
were ordered not to do so, as it was a noxious plant. That spring a new disease
broke out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and face, which the
doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite of all this, the soldiers of
Denísov’s squadron fed chiefly on “Máshka’s sweet root,” because it was the
second week that the last of the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a
pound a man and the last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.
The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the thatched roofs
and had become terribly thin, though still covered with tufts of felty winter hair.
Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living just as usual.
Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, the hussars formed line
for roll call, kept things in order, groomed their horses, polished their arms,
brought in straw from the thatched roofs in place of fodder, and sat down to dine
round the caldrons from which they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty
food and their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires, steamed
themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked sprouting rotten
potatoes, told and listened to stories of Potëmkin’s and Suvórov’s campaigns, or
to legends of Alësha the Sly, or the priest’s laborer Mikólka.
The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless, half-ruined
houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes and, in general, food for
the men. The younger ones occupied themselves as before, some playing cards
(there was plenty of money, though there was no food), some with more
innocent games, such as quoits and skittles. The general trend of the campaign
was rarely spoken of, partly because nothing certain was known about it, partly
because there was a vague feeling that in the main it was going badly.
Rostóv lived, as before, with Denísov, and since their furlough they had
become more friendly than ever. Denísov never spoke of Rostóv’s family, but by
the tender friendship his commander showed him, Rostóv felt that the elder
hussar’s luckless love for Natásha played a part in strengthening their friendship.
Denísov evidently tried to expose Rostóv to danger as seldom as possible, and
after an action greeted his safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging
expeditions, in a deserted and ruined village to which he had come in search of
provisions, Rostóv found a family consisting of an old Pole and his daughter
with an infant in arms. They were half clad, hungry, too weak to get away on
foot and had no means of obtaining a conveyance. Rostóv brought them to his
quarters, placed them in his own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while
the old man was recovering. One of his comrades, talking of women, began
chaffing Rostóv, saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it
would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the pretty Polish girl he had
saved. Rostóv took the joke as an insult, flared up, and said such unpleasant
things to the officer that it was all Denísov could do to prevent a duel. When the
officer had gone away, Denísov, who did not himself know what Rostóv’s
relations with the Polish girl might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of
temper, and Rostóv replied:
“Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can’t tell you how it
offended me... because... well, for that reason....”
Denísov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
without looking at Rostóv, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.
“Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostóvs are!” he muttered, and Rostóv noticed
tears in his eyes.
CHAPTER XVI
In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor’s arrival, but
Rostóv had no chance of being present at the review he held at Bartenstein, as
the Pávlograds were at the outposts far beyond that place.
They were bivouacking. Denísov and Rostóv were living in an earth hut, dug
out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and turf. The hut was
made in the following manner, which had then come into vogue. A trench was
dug three and a half feet wide, four feet eight inches deep, and eight feet long. At
one end of the trench, steps were cut out and these formed the entrance and
vestibule. The trench itself was the room, in which the lucky ones, such as the
squadron commander, had a board, lying on piles at the end opposite the
entrance, to serve as a table. On each side of the trench, the earth was cut out to a
breadth of about two and a half feet, and this did duty for bedsteads and couches.
The roof was so constructed that one could stand up in the middle of the trench
and could even sit up on the beds if one drew close to the table. Denísov, who
was living luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a
board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken but mended) glass in
it for a window. When it was very cold, embers from the soldiers’ campfire were
placed on a bent sheet of iron on the steps in the “reception room”—as Denísov
called that part of the hut—and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom
there were always some with Denísov and Rostóv, sat in their shirt sleeves.
In April, Rostóv was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and eight,
returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers, changed his rain-soaked
underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got warm, then tidied up the things on
the table and in his own corner, and, his face glowing from exposure to the wind
and with nothing on but his shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under
his head. He was pleasantly considering the probability of being promoted in a
few days for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was awaiting Denísov, who
had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a talk.
Suddenly he heard Denísov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the hut,
evidently much excited. Rostóv moved to the window to see whom he was
speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topchéenko.
“I ordered you not to let them eat that Máshka woot stuff!” Denísov was
shouting. “And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchúk bwought some fwom
the fields.”
“I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they don’t obey,”
answered the quartermaster.
Rostóv lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: “Let him fuss
and bustle now, my job’s done and I’m lying down—capitally!” He could hear
that Lavrúshka—that sly, bold orderly of Denísov’s—was talking, as well as the
quartermaster. Lavrúshka was saying something about loaded wagons, biscuits,
and oxen he had seen when he had gone out for provisions.
Then Denísov’s voice was heard shouting farther and farther away. “Saddle!
Second platoon!”
“Where are they off to now?” thought Rostóv.
Five minutes later, Denísov came into the hut, climbed with muddy boots on
the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things about, took his leaded whip,
buckled on his saber, and went out again. In answer to Rostóv’s inquiry where he
was going, he answered vaguely and crossly that he had some business.
“Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!” said Denísov going
out, and Rostóv heard the hoofs of several horses splashing through the mud. He
did not even trouble to find out where Denísov had gone. Having got warm in
his corner, he fell asleep and did not leave the hut till toward evening. Denísov
had not yet returned. The weather had cleared up, and near the next hut two
officers and a cadet were playing sváyka, laughing as they threw their missiles
which buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostóv joined them. In the middle of
the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen hussars on
their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the hussars drew up to
the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars surrounded them.
“There now, Denísov has been worrying,” said Rostóv, “and here are the
provisions.”
“So they are!” said the officers. “Won’t the soldiers be glad!”
A little behind the hussars came Denísov, accompanied by two infantry
officers with whom he was talking.
Rostóv went to meet them.
“I warn you, Captain,” one of the officers, a short thin man, evidently very
angry, was saying.
“Haven’t I told you I won’t give them up?” replied Denísov.
“You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny—seizing the transport of one’s
own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two days.”
“And mine have had nothing for two weeks,” said Denísov.
“It is robbery! You’ll answer for it, sir!” said the infantry officer, raising his
voice.
“Now, what are you pestewing me for?” cried Denísov, suddenly losing his
temper. “I shall answer for it and not you, and you’d better not buzz about here
till you get hurt. Be off! Go!” he shouted at the officers.
“Very well, then!” shouted the little officer, undaunted and not riding away. “If
you are determined to rob, I’ll...”
“Go to the devil! quick ma’ch, while you’re safe and sound!” and Denísov
turned his horse on the officer.
“Very well, very well!” muttered the officer, threateningly, and turning his
horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.
“A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!” shouted Denísov after
him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a mounted
infantryman) and riding up to Rostóv, he burst out laughing.
“I’ve taken twansports from the infantwy by force!” he said. “After all, can’t
let our men starve.”
The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an infantry
regiment, but learning from Lavrúshka that the transport was unescorted,
Denísov with his hussars had seized it by force. The soldiers had biscuits dealt
out to them freely, and they even shared them with the other squadrons.
The next day the regimental commander sent for Denísov, and holding his
fingers spread out before his eyes said:
“This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and won’t begin
proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff and settle the business
there in the commissariat department and if possible sign a receipt for such and
such stores received. If not, as the demand was booked against an infantry
regiment, there will be a row and the affair may end badly.”
From the regimental commander’s, Denísov rode straight to the staff with a
sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he came back to his dugout in
a state such as Rostóv had never yet seen him in. Denísov could not speak and
gasped for breath. When Rostóv asked what was the matter, he only uttered
some incoherent oaths and threats in a hoarse, feeble voice.
Alarmed at Denísov’s condition, Rostóv suggested that he should undress,
drink some water, and send for the doctor.
“Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but I’ll
always thwash scoundwels... and I’ll tell the Empewo’... Ice...” he muttered.
The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely necessary to
bleed Denísov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken from his hairy arm and
only then was he able to relate what had happened to him.
“I get there,” began Denísov. “‘Now then, where’s your chief’s quarters?’
They were pointed out. ‘Please to wait.’ ‘I’ve widden twenty miles and have
duties to attend to and no time to wait. Announce me.’ Vewy well, so out comes
their head chief—also took it into his head to lecture me: ‘It’s
wobbewy!’—‘Wobbewy,’ I say, ‘is not done by man who seizes pwovisions to
feed his soldiers, but by him who takes them to fill his own pockets!’ ‘Will you
please be silent?’ ‘Vewy good!’ Then he says: ‘Go and give a weceipt to the
commissioner, but your affair will be passed on to headquarters.’ I go to the
commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do you think? No, but wait a bit!...
Who is it that’s starving us?” shouted Denísov, hitting the table with the fist of
his newly bled arm so violently that the table nearly broke down and the
tumblers on it jumped about. “Telyánin! ‘What? So it’s you who’s starving us to
death! Is it? Take this and this!’ and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his snout... ‘Ah,
what a... what a...!’ and I sta’ted fwashing him... Well, I’ve had a bit of fun I can
tell you!” cried Denísov, gleeful and yet angry, his white teeth showing under his
black mustache. “I’d have killed him if they hadn’t taken him away!”
“But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself,” said Rostóv. “You’ve set
your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again.”
Denísov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke calm and
cheerful.
But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostóv’s and Denísov’s
dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully showed them a paper
addressed to Major Denísov from the regimental commander in which inquiries
were made about yesterday’s occurrence. The adjutant told them that the affair
was likely to take a very bad turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and
that in view of the severity with which marauding and insubordination were now
regarded, degradation to the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.
The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after seizing the
transports, Major Denísov, being drunk, went to the chief quartermaster and
without any provocation called him a thief, threatened to strike him, and on
being led out had rushed into the office and given two officials a thrashing, and
dislocated the arm of one of them.
In answer to Rostóv’s renewed questions, Denísov said, laughing, that he
thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed up in it, but that it
was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not in the least fear any kind of trial,
and that if those scoundrels dared attack him he would give them an answer that
they would not easily forget.
Denísov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostóv knew him too
well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart he feared a court-
martial and was worried over the affair, which was evidently taking a bad turn.
Every day, letters of inquiry and notices from the court arrived, and on the first
of May, Denísov was ordered to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority
and appear before the staff of his division to explain his violence at the
commissariat office. On the previous day Plátov reconnoitered with two Cossack
regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denísov, as was his wont, rode out in
front of the outposts, parading his courage. A bullet fired by a French
sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of his leg. Perhaps at another time
Denísov would not have left the regiment for so slight a wound, but now he took
advantage of it to excuse himself from appearing at the staff and went into
hospital.
CHAPTER XVII
In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the Pávlograds did not
take part, and after that an armistice was proclaimed. Rostóv, who felt his
friend’s absence very much, having no news of him since he left and feeling very
anxious about his wound and the progress of his affairs, took advantage of the
armistice to get leave to visit Denísov in hospital.
The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice devastated by
Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when it is so beautiful out in
the fields, the little town presented a particularly dismal appearance with its
broken roofs and fences, its foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and
drunken soldiers wandering about.
The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window frames and
panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a wooden fence that
had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged soldiers, with pale swollen faces,
were sitting or walking about in the sunshine in the yard.
Directly Rostóv entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of putrefaction
and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army doctor smoking a cigar. The
doctor was followed by a Russian assistant.
“I can’t tear myself to pieces,” the doctor was saying. “Come to Makár
Alexéevich in the evening. I shall be there.”
The assistant asked some further questions.
“Oh, do the best you can! Isn’t it all the same?” The doctor noticed Rostóv
coming upstairs.
“What do you want, sir?” said the doctor. “What do you want? The bullets
having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a pesthouse, sir.”
“How so?” asked Rostóv.
“Typhus, sir. It’s death to go in. Only we two, Makéev and I” (he pointed to
the assistant), “keep on here. Some five of us doctors have died in this place....
When a new one comes he is done for in a week,” said the doctor with evident
satisfaction. “Prussian doctors have been invited here, but our allies don’t like it
at all.”
Rostóv explained that he wanted to see Major Denísov of the hussars, who
was wounded.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in charge of three
hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It’s well that the charitable
Prussian ladies send us two pounds of coffee and some lint each month or we
should be lost!” he laughed. “Four hundred, sir, and they’re always sending me
fresh ones. There are four hundred? Eh?” he asked, turning to the assistant.
The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and impatient for the
talkative doctor to go.
“Major Denísov,” Rostóv said again. “He was wounded at Molliten.”
“Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makéev?” queried the doctor, in a tone of indifference.
The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor’s words.
“Is he tall and with reddish hair?” asked the doctor.
Rostóv described Denísov’s appearance.
“There was one like that,” said the doctor, as if pleased. “That one is dead, I
fancy. However, I’ll look up our list. We had a list. Have you got it, Makéev?”
“Makár Alexéevich has the list,” answered the assistant. “But if you’ll step
into the officers’ wards you’ll see for yourself,” he added, turning to Rostóv.
“Ah, you’d better not go, sir,” said the doctor, “or you may have to stay here
yourself.”
But Rostóv bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the assistant to
show him the way.
“Only don’t blame me!” the doctor shouted up after him.
Rostóv and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell was so strong
there that Rostóv held his nose and had to pause and collect his strength before
he could go on. A door opened to the right, and an emaciated sallow man on
crutches, barefoot and in underclothing, limped out and, leaning against the
doorpost, looked with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing.
Glancing in at the door, Rostóv saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the
floor on straw and overcoats.
“May I go in and look?”
“What is there to see?” said the assistant.
But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in, Rostóv
entered the soldiers’ ward. The foul air, to which he had already begun to get
used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It was a little different, more
pungent, and one felt that this was where it originated.
In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large windows, the
sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to the walls, and leaving a
passage in the middle. Most of them were unconscious and paid no attention to
the newcomers. Those who were conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin
yellow faces, and all looked intently at Rostóv with the same expression of hope,
of relief, reproach, and envy of another’s health. Rostóv went to the middle of
the room and looking through the open doors into the two adjoining rooms saw
the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently around. He had not at all
expected such a sight. Just before him, almost across the middle of the passage
on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his
hair. The man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was
purple, his eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen, and on his
bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was
knocking the back of his head against the floor, hoarsely uttering some word
which he kept repeating. Rostóv listened and made out the word. It was “drink,
drink, a drink!” Rostóv glanced round, looking for someone who would put this
man back in his place and bring him water.
“Who looks after the sick here?” he asked the assistant.
Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the next
room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostóv.
“Good day, your honor!” he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostóv and evidently
mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.
“Get him to his place and give him some water,” said Rostóv, pointing to the
Cossack.
“Yes, your honor,” the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his eyes more
than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not move.
“No, it’s impossible to do anything here,” thought Rostóv, lowering his eyes,
and he was going out, but became aware of an intense look fixed on him on his
right, and he turned. Close to the corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven,
gray-bearded soldier as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes
intently fixed on Rostóv. The man’s neighbor on one side whispered something
to him, pointing at Rostóv, who noticed that the old man wanted to speak to him.
He drew nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg bent under him, the
other had been amputated above the knee. His neighbor on the other side, who
lay motionless some distance from him with his head thrown back, was a young
soldier with a snub nose. His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes
were rolled back. Rostóv looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down
his back.
“Why, this one seems...” he began, turning to the assistant.
“And how we’ve been begging, your honor,” said the old soldier, his jaw
quivering. “He’s been dead since morning. After all we’re men, not dogs.”
“I’ll send someone at once. He shall be taken away—taken away at once,”
said the assistant hurriedly. “Let us go, your honor.”
“Yes, yes, let us go,” said Rostóv hastily, and lowering his eyes and shrinking,
he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of reproachful envious eyes that
were fixed upon him, and went out of the room.
CHAPTER XVIII
Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostóv to the officers’ wards,
consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood open. There were beds in
these rooms and the sick and wounded officers were lying or sitting on them.
Some were walking about the rooms in hospital dressing gowns. The first person
Rostóv met in the officers’ ward was a thin little man with one arm, who was
walking about the first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with a
pipe between his teeth. Rostóv looked at him, trying to remember where he had
seen him before.
“See where we’ve met again!” said the little man. “Túshin, Túshin, don’t you
remember, who gave you a lift at Schön Grabern? And I’ve had a bit cut off, you
see...” he went on with a smile, pointing to the empty sleeve of his dressing
gown. “Looking for Vasíli Dmítrich Denísov? My neighbor,” he added, when he
heard who Rostóv wanted. “Here, here,” and Túshin led him into the next room,
from whence came sounds of several laughing voices.
“How can they laugh, or even live at all here?” thought Rostóv, still aware of
that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong in the soldiers’ ward,
and still seeming to see fixed on him those envious looks which had followed
him out from both sides, and the face of that young soldier with eyes rolled back.
Denísov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket, though it was
nearly noon.
“Ah, Wostóv? How are you, how are you?” he called out, still in the same
voice as in the regiment, but Rostóv noticed sadly that under this habitual ease
and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed itself in the expression
of Denísov’s face and the intonations of his voice.
His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six weeks after
he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as the faces of the other
hospital patients, but it was not this that struck Rostóv. What struck him was that
Denísov did not seem glad to see him, and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not
ask about the regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when Rostóv
spoke of these matters did not listen.
Rostóv even noticed that Denísov did not like to be reminded of the regiment,
or in general of that other free life which was going on outside the hospital. He
seemed to try to forget that old life and was only interested in the affair with the
commissariat officers. On Rostóv’s inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at
once produced from under his pillow a paper he had received from the
commission and the rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when
he began reading his paper and specially drew Rostóv’s attention to the stinging
rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions, who had gathered
round Rostóv—a fresh arrival from the world outside—gradually began to
disperse as soon as Denísov began reading his answer. Rostóv noticed by their
faces that all those gentlemen had already heard that story more than once and
were tired of it. Only the man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to
sit on his bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed
Túshin still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of the
reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denísov.
“But what I say is,” he said, turning to Rostóv, “it would be best simply to
petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will now be distributed,
and surely a pardon would be granted....”
“Me petition the Empewo’!” exclaimed Denísov, in a voice to which he tried
hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like an expression of
irritable impotence. “What for? If I were a wobber I would ask mercy, but I’m
being court-martialed for bwinging wobbers to book. Let them twy me, I’m not
afwaid of anyone. I’ve served the Tsar and my countwy honowably and have not
stolen! And am I to be degwaded?... Listen, I’m w’iting to them stwaight. This is
what I say: ‘If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...’”
“It’s certainly well written,” said Túshin, “but that’s not the point, Vasíli
Dmítrich,” and he also turned to Rostóv. “One has to submit, and Vasíli Dmítrich
doesn’t want to. You know the auditor told you it was a bad business.”
“Well, let it be bad,” said Denísov.
“The auditor wrote out a petition for you,” continued Túshin, “and you ought
to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he” (indicating Rostóv)
“has connections on the staff. You won’t find a better opportunity.”
“Haven’t I said I’m not going to gwovel?” Denísov interrupted him, went on
reading his paper.
Rostóv had not the courage to persuade Denísov, though he instinctively felt
that the way advised by Túshin and the other officers was the safest, and though
he would have been glad to be of service to Denísov. He knew his stubborn will
and straightforward hasty temper.
When the reading of Denísov’s virulent reply, which took more than an hour,
was over, Rostóv said nothing, and he spent the rest of the day in a most dejected
state of mind amid Denísov’s hospital comrades, who had gathered round him,
telling them what he knew and listening to their stories. Denísov was moodily
silent all the evening.
Late in the evening, when Rostóv was about to leave, he asked Denísov
whether he had no commission for him.
“Yes, wait a bit,” said Denísov, glancing round at the officers, and taking his
papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where he had an inkpot,
and sat down to write.
“It seems it’s no use knocking one’s head against a wall!” he said, coming
from the window and giving Rostóv a large envelope. In it was the petition to the
Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which Denísov, without alluding to the
offenses of the commissariat officials, simply asked for pardon.
“Hand it in. It seems...”
He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.
CHAPTER XIX
Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state of
Denísov’s affairs, Rostóv rode to Tilsit with the letter to the Emperor.
On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in Tilsit.
Borís Drubetskóy had asked the important personage on whom he was in
attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the stay at Tilsit.
“I should like to see the great man,” he said, alluding to Napoleon, whom
hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.
“You are speaking of Buonaparte?” asked the general, smiling.
Borís looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that he was being
tested.
“I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon,” he replied. The general
patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.
“You will go far,” he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.
Borís was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two Emperors
met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw Napoleon pass before the
French Guards on the farther bank of the river, saw the pensive face of the
Emperor Alexander as he sat in silence in a tavern on the bank of the Niemen
awaiting Napoleon’s arrival, saw both Emperors get into boats, and saw how
Napoleon—reaching the raft first—stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander
and held out his hand to him, and how they both retired into the pavilion. Since
he had begun to move in the highest circles Borís had made it his habit to watch
attentively all that went on around him and to note it down. At the time of the
meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of those who had come with Napoleon and
about the uniforms they wore, and listened attentively to words spoken by
important personages. At the moment the Emperors went into the pavilion he
looked at his watch, and did not forget to look at it again when Alexander came
out. The interview had lasted an hour and fifty-three minutes. He noted this
down that same evening, among other facts he felt to be of historic importance.
As the Emperor’s suite was a very small one, it was a matter of great importance,
for a man who valued his success in the service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of
this interview between the two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Borís
felt that henceforth his position was fully assured. He had not only become
known, but people had grown accustomed to him and accepted him. Twice he
had executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the latter knew his
face, and all those at court, far from cold-shouldering him as at first when they
considered him a newcomer, would now have been surprised had he been absent.
Borís lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilínski. Zhilínski, a
Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond of the French, and
almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French officers of the Guard and from
French headquarters were dining and lunching with him and Borís.
On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilínski arranged a
supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an aide-de-camp of
Napoleon’s, there were also several French officers of the Guard, and a page of
Napoleon’s, a young lad of an old aristocratic French family. That same day,
Rostóv, profiting by the darkness to avoid being recognized in civilian dress,
came to Tilsit and went to the lodging occupied by Borís and Zhilínski.
Rostóv, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far from
having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and the French—
who from being foes had suddenly become friends—that had taken place at
headquarters and in Borís. In the army, Bonaparte and the French were still
regarded with mingled feelings of anger, contempt, and fear. Only recently,
talking with one of Plátov’s Cossack officers, Rostóv had argued that if
Napoleon were taken prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a
criminal. Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the road,
Rostóv had maintained with heat that peace was impossible between a legitimate
sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostóv was therefore unpleasantly struck
by the presence of French officers in Borís’ lodging, dressed in uniforms he had
been accustomed to see from quite a different point of view from the outposts of
the flank. As soon as he noticed a French officer, who thrust his head out of the
door, that warlike feeling of hostility which he always experienced at the sight of
the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at the threshold and asked in
Russian whether Drubetskóy lived there. Borís, hearing a strange voice in the
anteroom, came out to meet him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a
moment on his face on first recognizing Rostóv.
“Ah, it’s you? Very glad, very glad to see you,” he said, however, coming
toward him with a smile. But Rostóv had noticed his first impulse.
“I’ve come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have business,”
he said coldly.
“No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment. Dans
un moment je suis à vous,” * he said, answering someone who called him.
* “In a minute I shall be at your disposal.”
The smile vanished from Speránski’s white face, which was much improved
by the change. Probably Prince Andrew’s thought interested him.
“Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,” * he began, pronouncing
French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower than in Russian but
quite calmly.
* “If you regard the question from that point of view.”
At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will reproved
Bezúkhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue alone, but also a
love of strife that had moved him in the dispute. Pierre did not answer him and
asked briefly whether his proposal would be accepted. He was told that it would
not, and without waiting for the usual formalities he left the lodge and went
home.
CHAPTER VIII
Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For three days
after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a sofa at home receiving no
one and going nowhere.
It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who implored him to
see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and how she wished to
devote her whole life to him.
At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she would return
to Petersburg from abroad.
Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre respected less
than the others forced his way in to see him and, turning the conversation upon
Pierre’s matrimonial affairs, by way of fraternal advice expressed the opinion
that his severity to his wife was wrong and that he was neglecting one of the first
rules of Freemasonry by not forgiving the penitent.
At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasíli’s wife, sent to him
imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a most important
matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy against him and that they wanted
to reunite him with his wife, and in the mood he then was, this was not even
unpleasant to him. Nothing mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of
much importance, and under the influence of the depression that possessed him
he valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his wife.
“No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to blame,” he
thought.
If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife, it was only
because in his state of depression he did not feel able to take any step. Had his
wife come to him, he would not have turned her away. Compared to what
preoccupied him, was it not a matter of indifference whether he lived with his
wife or not?
Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre late one night
prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see Joseph Alexéevich. This is
what he noted in his diary:
Moscow, 17th November
I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down what I have
experienced. Joseph Alexéevich is living poorly and has for three years been
suffering from a painful disease of the bladder. No one has ever heard him utter a
groan or a word of complaint. From morning till late at night, except when he
eats his very plain food, he is working at science. He received me graciously and
made me sit down on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of the Knights of
the East and of Jerusalem, and he responded in the same manner, asking me with
a mild smile what I had learned and gained in the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I
told him everything as best I could, and told him what I had proposed to our
Petersburg lodge, of the bad reception I had encountered, and of my rupture with
the Brothers. Joseph Alexéevich, having remained silent and thoughtful for a
good while, told me his view of the matter, which at once lit up for me my whole
past and the future path I should follow. He surprised me by asking whether I
remembered the threefold aim of the order: (1) The preservation and study of the
mystery. (2) The purification and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3)
The improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which is
the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and self-purification.
Only to this aim can we always strive independently of circumstances. But at the
same time just this aim demands the greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by
pride, losing sight of this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery
which in our impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the
human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and profligacy.
Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is attracted by social activity
and puffed up by pride. On this ground Joseph Alexéevich condemned my
speech and my whole activity, and in the depth of my soul I agreed with him.
Talking of my family affairs he said to me, “the chief duty of a true Mason, as I
have told you, lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the
difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on the contrary,
my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares that we can attain our three
chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge—for man can only know himself by comparison,
(2) Self-perfecting, which can only be attained by conflict, and (3) The
attainment of the chief virtue—love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can
show us its vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new
life.” These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of his great
physical sufferings, Joseph Alexéevich is never weary of life though he loves
death, for which—in spite of the purity and loftiness of his inner man—he does
not yet feel himself sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me
fully the meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the
numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not to avoid
intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only second-grade posts
in the lodge, to try, while diverting the Brothers from pride, to turn them toward
the true path self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for
myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that end he gave
me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which I will in future note
down all my actions.
Petersburg, 23rd November
I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears and
said that Hélène was here and that she implored me to hear her; that she was
innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I knew that if I once let
myself see her I should not have strength to go on refusing what she wanted. In
my perplexity I did not know whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor
been here he would have told me what to do. I went to my room and reread
Joseph Alexéevich’s letters and recalled my conversations with him, and
deduced from it all that I ought not to refuse a supplicant, and ought to reach a
helping hand to everyone—especially to one so closely bound to me—and that I
must bear my cross. But if I forgive her for the sake of doing right, then let union
with her have only a spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and what I wrote to
Joseph Alexéevich. I told my wife that I begged her to forget the past, to forgive
me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had nothing to forgive. It
gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know how hard it was for me to see her
again. I have settled on the upper floor of this big house and am experiencing a
happy feeling of regeneration.
CHAPTER IX
At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at court and at
the grand balls was divided into several circles, each with its own particular
tone. The largest of these was the French circle of the Napoleonic alliance, the
circle of Count Rumyántsev and Caulaincourt. In this group Hélène, as soon as
she had settled in Petersburg with her husband, took a very prominent place. She
was visited by the members of the French embassy and by many belonging to
that circle and noted for their intellect and polished manners.
Hélène had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the Emperors and had
brought from there these connections with the Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt
her success had been brilliant. Napoleon himself had noticed her in the theater
and said of her: “C’est un superbe animal.” * Her success as a beautiful and
elegant woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer than
before. What did surprise him was that during these last two years his wife had
succeeded in gaining the reputation “d’ une femme charmante, aussi spirituelle
que belle.” *(2) The distinguished Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters.
Bilíbin saved up his epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezúkhova’s
presence. To be received in the Countess Bezúkhova’s salon was regarded as a
diploma of intellect. Young men read books before attending Hélène’s evenings,
to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy, and even
ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a way Hélène was a
power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with a
strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her evenings and dinner parties, where
politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At these parties his feelings
were like those of a conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at any
moment. But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a
salon, or because those who were deceived found pleasure in the deception, at
any rate it remained unexposed and Hélène Bezúkhova’s reputation as a lovely
and clever woman became so firmly established that she could say the emptiest
and stupidest things and everybody would go into raptures over every word of
hers and look for a profound meaning in it of which she herself had no
conception.
* “That’s a superb animal.”
24th November
Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. (By Joseph
Alexéevich’s advice Pierre had entered the service of the state and served on one
of the committees.) Returned home for dinner and dined alone—the countess
had many visitors I do not like. I ate and drank moderately and after dinner
copied out some passages for the Brothers. In the evening I went down to the
countess and told a funny story about B., and only remembered that I ought not
to have done so when everybody laughed loudly at it.
I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me to walk
in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and deliberation, (2) to vanquish
lust by self-restraint and repulsion, (3) to withdraw from worldliness, but not
avoid (a) the service of the state, (b) family duties, (c) relations with my friends,
and the management of my affairs.
27th November
I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God, help and
strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the Scriptures, but without
proper feeling. Brother Urúsov came and we talked about worldly vanities. He
told me of the Emperor’s new projects. I began to criticize them, but
remembered my rules and my benefactor’s words—that a true Freemason should
be a zealous worker for the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker
when not called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O.
visited me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a new Brother.
They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak and unworthy. Then our
talk turned to the interpretation of the seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the
seven sciences, the seven virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy
Spirit. Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place.
The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the magnificence of the
spectacle. It was Borís Drubetskóy who was admitted. I nominated him and was
the Rhetor. A strange feeling agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the
dark chamber. I caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I
vainly tried to overcome. That is why I should really like to save him from evil
and lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of him did not leave me. It
seemed to me that his object in entering the Brotherhood was merely to be
intimate and in favor with members of our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had
asked me several times whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a
question to which I could not reply) and that according to my observation he is
incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and is too preoccupied and
satisfied with the outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I had no cause to
doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all the time I stood alone with
him in the dark temple it seemed to me that he was smiling contemptuously at
my words, and I wished really to stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I
could not be eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the Brothers
and to the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to find the true path
out of the labyrinth of lies!
After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then the following was
written:
I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who advised me
to hold fast by Brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was revealed to me.
Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim is the name of the ruler of
all. The third name is the name unutterable which means the All. Talks with
Brother V. strengthen, refresh, and support me in the path of virtue. In his
presence doubt has no place. The distinction between the poor teachings of
mundane science and our sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human
sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to examine it.
In the holy science of our order all is one, all is known in its entirety and life.
The Trinity—the three elements of matter—are sulphur, mercury, and salt.
Sulphur is of an oily and fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature
it arouses a desire in the latter by means of which it attracts mercury, seizes it,
holds it, and in combination produces other bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile,
spiritual essence. Christ, the Holy Spirit, Him!...
3rd December
Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went and paced
up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but instead my imagination
pictured an occurrence of four years ago, when Dólokhov, meeting me in
Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I was enjoying perfect peace of mind in
spite of my wife’s absence. At the time I gave him no answer. Now I recalled
every detail of that meeting and in my mind gave him the most malevolent and
bitter replies. I recollected myself and drove away that thought only when I
found myself glowing with anger, but I did not sufficiently repent. Afterwards
Borís Drubetskóy came and began relating various adventures. His coming
vexed me from the first, and I said something disagreeable to him. He replied. I
flared up and said much that was unpleasant and even rude to him. He became
silent, and I recollected myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get
on with him at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set myself above him and
so become much worse than he, for he is lenient to my rudeness while I on the
contrary nourish contempt for him. O God, grant that in his presence I may
rather see my own vileness, and behave so that he too may benefit. After dinner I
fell asleep and as I was drowsing off I clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear,
“Thy day!”
I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded by
dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my left thigh
with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it with my hands. Scarcely
had I torn it off before another, a bigger one, began biting me. I lifted it up, but
the higher I lifted it the bigger and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A.
came and, taking my arm, led me to a building to enter which we had to pass
along a narrow plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to
clamber up a fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After much
effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one side and my body
on the other. I looked round and saw Brother A. standing on the fence and
pointing me to a broad avenue and garden, and in the garden was a large and
beautiful building. I woke up. O Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear
from myself these dogs—my passions especially the last, which unites in itself
the strength of all the former ones, and aid me to enter that temple of virtue to a
vision of which I attained in my dream.
7th December
I dreamed that Joseph Alexéevich was sitting in my house, and that I was very
glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered incessantly with
other people and suddenly remembered that this could not please him, and I
wished to come close to him and embrace him. But as soon as I drew near I saw
that his face had changed and grown young, and he was quietly telling me
something about the teaching of our order, but so softly that I could not hear it.
Then it seemed that we all left the room and something strange happened. We
were sitting or lying on the floor. He was telling me something, and I wished to
show him my sensibility, and not listening to what he was saying I began
picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and the grace of God
sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I was glad he noticed this. But
he looked at me with vexation and jumped up, breaking off his remarks. I felt
abashed and asked whether what he had been saying did not concern me; but he
did not reply, gave me a kind look, and then we suddenly found ourselves in my
bedroom where there is a double bed. He lay down on the edge of it and I burned
with longing to caress him and lie down too. And he said, “Tell me frankly what
is your chief temptation? Do you know it? I think you know it already.” Abashed
by this question, I replied that sloth was my chief temptation. He shook his head
incredulously; and even more abashed, I said that though I was living with my
wife as he advised, I was not living with her as her husband. To this he replied
that one should not deprive a wife of one’s embraces and gave me to understand
that that was my duty. But I replied that I should be ashamed to do it, and
suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and found in my mind the text from
the Gospel: “The life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and
the darkness comprehended it not.” Joseph Alexéevich’s face had looked young
and bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he wrote
about “conjugal duties.”
9th December
I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw that I was in
Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and Joseph Alexéevich came in
from the drawing room. I seemed to know at once that the process of
regeneration had already taken place in him, and I rushed to meet him. I
embraced him and kissed his hands, and he said, “Hast thou noticed that my face
is different?” I looked at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw that his face
was young, but that he had no hair on his head and his features were quite
changed. And I said, “I should have known you had I met you by chance,” and I
thought to myself, “Am I telling the truth?” And suddenly I saw him lying like a
dead body; then he gradually recovered and went with me into my study
carrying a large book of sheets of drawing paper; I said, “I drew that,” and he
answered by bowing his head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there were
excellent drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings represented the
love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on its pages I saw a beautiful
representation of a maiden in transparent garments and with a transparent body,
flying up to the clouds. And I seemed to know that this maiden was nothing else
than a representation of the Song of Songs. And looking at those drawings I
dreamed I felt that I was doing wrong, but could not tear myself away from
them. Lord, help me! My God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be
done; but if I am myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of
my debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!
CHAPTER XI
The Rostóvs’ monetary affairs had not improved during the two years they
had spent in the country.
Though Nicholas Rostóv had kept firmly to his resolution and was still
serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending comparatively little, the way
of life at Otrádnoe—Mítenka’s management of affairs, in particular—was such
that the debts inevitably increased every year. The only resource obviously
presenting itself to the old count was to apply for an official post, so he had
come to Petersburg to look for one and also, as he said, to let the lassies enjoy
themselves for the last time.
Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Véra and was accepted.
Though in Moscow the Rostóvs belonged to the best society without
themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of acquaintances
was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they were provincials, and the
very people they had entertained in Moscow without inquiring to what set they
belonged, here looked down on them.
The Rostóvs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in Moscow,
and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country neighbors from
Otrádnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters, Perónskaya a maid of
honor, Pierre Bezúkhov, and the son of their district postmaster who had
obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the men who very soon became frequent
visitors at the Rostóvs’ house in Petersburg were Borís, Pierre whom the count
had met in the street and dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole
days at the Rostóvs’ and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Véra, the attentions a
young man pays when he intends to propose.
Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at Austerlitz
and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He narrated that episode so
persistently and with so important an air that everyone believed in the merit and
usefulness of his deed, and he had obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.
In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had picked up
the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp standing near the
commander in chief and had taken it to his commander. Just as he had done after
Austerlitz, he related this occurrence at such length and so insistently that
everyone again believed it had been necessary to do this, and he received two
decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a captain in the Guards,
wore medals, and held some special lucrative posts in Petersburg.
Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg’s merits, it could not be
denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent terms with his
superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant career before him and an
assured position in society.
Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a Moscow
theater, Berg had pointed out Véra Rostóva to him and had said in German, “das
soll mein Weib werden,” * and from that moment had made up his mind to marry
her. Now in Petersburg, having considered the Rostóvs’ position and his own, he
decided that the time had come to propose.
* “That girl shall be my wife.”
Berg’s proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not flattering
to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an obscure Livonian gentleman
should propose marriage to a Countess Rostóva; but Berg’s chief characteristic
was such a naïve and good natured egotism that the Rostóvs involuntarily came
to think it would be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that
it was good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostóvs’ affairs were seriously
embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above all, Véra was twenty-
four, had been taken out everywhere, and though she was certainly good-looking
and sensible, no one up to now had proposed to her. So they gave their consent.
“You see,” said Berg to his comrade, whom he called “friend” only because he
knew that everyone has friends, “you see, I have considered it all, and should not
marry if I had not thought it all out or if it were in any way unsuitable. But on
the contrary, my papa and mamma are now provided for—I have arranged that
rent for them in the Baltic Provinces—and I can live in Petersburg on my pay,
and with her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not
marrying for money—I consider that dishonorable—but a wife should bring her
share and a husband his. I have my position in the service, she has connections
and some means. In our times that is worth something, isn’t it? But above all,
she is a handsome, estimable girl, and she loves me....”
Berg blushed and smiled.
“And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good. Now the
other sister, though they are the same family, is quite different—an unpleasant
character and has not the same intelligence. She is so... you know?...
Unpleasant... But my fiancée!... Well, you will be coming,” he was going to say,
“to dine,” but changed his mind and said “to take tea with us,” and quickly
doubling up his tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke, perfectly
embodying his dream of happiness.
After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by Berg’s proposal,
the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times took possession of the family,
but the rejoicing was external and insincere. In the family’s feeling toward this
wedding a certain awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were
ashamed of not having loved Véra sufficiently and of being so ready to get her
off their hands. The old count felt this most. He would probably have been
unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from the state of
his affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what his debts amounted to,
or what dowry he could give Véra. When his daughters were born he had
assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an estate with three hundred serfs; but
one of these estates had already been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the
interest so much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was impossible
to give it to Véra. Nor had he any money.
Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained before the
wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own mind the question of the
dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At one time the count thought of giving
her the Ryazán estate or of selling a forest, at another time of borrowing money
on a note of hand. A few days before the wedding Berg entered the count’s study
early one morning and, with a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his future
father-in-law to let him know what Véra’s dowry would be. The count was so
disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry that without consideration he gave the
first reply that came into his head. “I like your being businesslike about it.... I
like it. You shall be satisfied....”
And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the conversation.
But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did not know for certain how
much Véra would have and did not receive at least part of the dowry in advance,
he would have to break matters off.
“Because, consider, Count—if I allowed myself to marry now without having
definite means to maintain my wife, I should be acting badly....”
The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and to avoid
further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand for eighty thousand
rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on the shoulder, and said that he
was very grateful, but that it was impossible for him to arrange his new life
without receiving thirty thousand in ready money. “Or at least twenty thousand,
Count,” he added, “and then a note of hand for only sixty thousand.”
“Yes, yes, all right!” said the count hurriedly. “Only excuse me, my dear
fellow, I’ll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for eighty thousand as
well. Yes, yes! Kiss me.”
CHAPTER XII
Natásha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which she had
counted on her fingers with Borís after they had kissed four years ago. Since
then she had not seen him. Before Sónya and her mother, if Borís happened to be
mentioned, she spoke quite freely of that episode as of some childish, long-
forgotten matter that was not worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her
soul the question whether her engagement to Borís was a jest or an important,
binding promise tormented her.
Since Borís left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had not seen the Rostóvs.
He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed near Otrádnoe, but had
never been to see them.
Sometimes it occurred to Natásha that he did not wish to see her, and this
conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders spoke of him.
“Nowadays old friends are not remembered,” the countess would say when
Borís was mentioned.
Anna Mikháylovna also had of late visited them less frequently, seemed to
hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke rapturously and gratefully
of the merits of her son and the brilliant career on which he had entered. When
the Rostóvs came to Petersburg Borís called on them.
He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natásha was his
most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of letting her and
her parents feel that the childish relations between himself and Natásha could not
be binding either on her or on him. He had a brilliant position in society thanks
to his intimacy with Countess Bezúkhova, a brilliant position in the service
thanks to the patronage of an important personage whose complete confidence
he enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the richest
heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be realized. When he
entered the Rostóvs’ drawing room Natásha was in her own room. When she
heard of his arrival she almost ran into the drawing room, flushed and beaming
with a more than cordial smile.
Borís remembered Natásha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining from under
her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had known her four years
before; and so he was taken aback when quite a different Natásha entered, and
his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This expression on his face pleased
Natásha.
“Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?” asked the countess.
Borís kissed Natásha’s hand and said that he was astonished at the change in
her.
“How handsome you have grown!”
“I should think so!” replied Natásha’s laughing eyes.
“And is Papa older?” she asked.
Natásha sat down and, without joining in Borís’ conversation with the
countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood’s suitor. He felt the weight
of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced at her occasionally.
Borís’ uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were all comme il
faut and in the latest fashion. This Natásha noticed at once. He sat rather
sideways in the armchair next to the countess, arranging with his right hand the
cleanest of gloves that fitted his left hand like a skin, and he spoke with a
particularly refined compression of his lips about the amusements of the highest
Petersburg society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow
acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natásha felt, that he alluded, when
speaking of the highest aristocracy, to an ambassador’s ball he had attended, and
to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.
All this time Natásha sat silent, glancing up at him from under her brows. This
gaze disturbed and confused Borís more and more. He looked round more
frequently toward her, and broke off in what he was saying. He did not stay more
than ten minutes, then rose and took his leave. The same inquisitive, challenging,
and rather mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Borís said to
himself that Natásha attracted him just as much as ever, but that he must not
yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost without fortune, would
mean ruin to his career, while to renew their former relations without intending
to marry her would be dishonorable. Borís made up his mind to avoid meeting
Natásha, but despite that resolution he called again a few days later and began
calling often and spending whole days at the Rostóvs’. It seemed to him that he
ought to have an explanation with Natásha and tell her that the old times must be
forgotten, that in spite of everything... she could not be his wife, that he had no
means, and they would never let her marry him. But he failed to do so and felt
awkward about entering on such an explanation. From day to day he became
more and more entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sónya that Natásha was
in love with Borís as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him her
album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to the past, letting it
be understood how delightful was the present; and every day he went away in a
fog, without having said what he meant to, and not knowing what he was doing
or why he came, or how it would all end. He left off visiting Hélène and received
reproachful notes from her every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days
with the Rostóvs.
CHAPTER XIII
One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket, without her
false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing under her white cotton
cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and bowing to the ground in prayer, her
door creaked and Natásha, also in a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet
and her hair in curlpapers, ran in. The countess—her prayerful mood dispelled—
looked round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: “Can it be that this
couch will be my grave?” Natásha, flushed and eager, seeing her mother in
prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, and unconsciously put out her
tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing that her mother was still praying she ran on
tiptoe to the bed and, rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off
her slippers and jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might become her
grave. This couch was high, with a feather bed and five pillows each smaller
than the one below. Natásha jumped on it, sank into the feather bed, rolled over
to the wall, and began snuggling up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising
her knees to her chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering
herself up head and all, and now peeping at her mother. The countess finished
her prayers and came to the bed with a stern face, but seeing, that Natásha’s head
was covered, she smiled in her kind, weak way.
“Now then, now then!” said she.
“Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?” said Natásha. “Now, just one on your
throat and another... that’ll do!” And seizing her mother round the neck, she
kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her mother Natásha seemed rough,
but she was so sensitive and tactful that however she clasped her mother she
always managed to do it without hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable or
displeased.
“Well, what is it tonight?” said the mother, having arranged her pillows and
waited until Natásha, after turning over a couple of times, had settled down
beside her under the quilt, spread out her arms, and assumed a serious
expression.
These visits of Natásha’s at night before the count returned from his club were
one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and daughter.
“What is it tonight?—But I have to tell you...”
Natásha put her hand on her mother’s mouth.
“About Borís... I know,” she said seriously; “that’s what I have come about.
Don’t say it—I know. No, do tell me!” and she removed her hand. “Tell me,
Mamma! He’s nice?”
“Natásha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say Borís is nice.
He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what then?... What are you
thinking about? You have quite turned his head, I can see that....”
As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter. Natásha was lying
looking steadily straight before her at one of the mahogany sphinxes carved on
the corners of the bedstead, so that the countess only saw her daughter’s face in
profile. That face struck her by its peculiarly serious and concentrated
expression.
Natásha was listening and considering.
“Well, what then?” said she.
“You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him? You
know you can’t marry him.”
“Why not?” said Natásha, without changing her position.
“Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a relation... and
because you yourself don’t love him.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. It is not right, darling!”
“But if I want to...” said Natásha.
“Leave off talking nonsense,” said the countess.
“But if I want to...”
“Natásha, I am in earnest...”
Natásha did not let her finish. She drew the countess’ large hand to her, kissed
it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned it over and began kissing
first one knuckle, then the space between the knuckles, then the next knuckle,
whispering, “January, February, March, April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don’t
you say anything? Speak!” said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly
gazing at her daughter and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she
had wished to say.
“It won’t do, my love! Not everyone will understand this friendship dating
from your childish days, and to see him so intimate with you may injure you in
the eyes of other young men who visit us, and above all it torments him for
nothing. He may already have found a suitable and wealthy match, and now he’s
half crazy.”
“Crazy?” repeated Natásha.
“I’ll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin...”
“I know! Cyril Matvéich... but he is old.”
“He was not always old. But this is what I’ll do, Natásha, I’ll have a talk with
Borís. He need not come so often....”
“Why not, if he likes to?”
“Because I know it will end in nothing....”
“How can you know? No, Mamma, don’t speak to him! What nonsense!” said
Natásha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. “Well, I won’t marry,
but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it.” Natásha smiled and looked at her
mother. “Not to marry, but just so,” she added.
“How so, my pet?”
“Just so. There’s no need for me to marry him. But... just so.”
“Just so, just so,” repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she went off into
a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.
“Don’t laugh, stop!” cried Natásha. “You’re shaking the whole bed! You’re
awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait...” and she seized the countess’
hands and kissed a knuckle of the little finger, saying, “June,” and continued,
kissing, “July, August,” on the other hand. “But, Mamma, is he very much in
love? What do you think? Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And
he’s very nice, very, very nice. Only not quite my taste—he is so narrow, like the
dining-room clock.... Don’t you understand? Narrow, you know—gray, light
gray...”
“What rubbish you’re talking!” said the countess.
Natásha continued: “Don’t you really understand? Nicholas would
understand.... Bezúkhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is square.”
“You flirt with him too,” said the countess, laughing.
“No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue and red....
How can I explain it to you?”
“Little countess!” the count’s voice called from behind the door. “You’re not
asleep?” Natásha jumped up, snatched up her slippers, and ran barefoot to her
own room.
It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no one could
understand all that she understood and all there was in her.
“Sónya?” she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little kitten with her
enormous plait of hair. “No, how could she? She’s virtuous. She fell in love with
Nicholas and does not wish to know anything more. Even Mamma does not
understand. It is wonderful how clever I am and how... charming she is,” she
went on, speaking of herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very
wise man—the wisest and best of men—who was saying it of her. “There is
everything, everything in her,” continued this man. “She is unusually intelligent,
charming... and then she is pretty, uncommonly pretty, and agile—she swims and
rides splendidly... and her voice! One can really say it’s a wonderful voice!”
She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw herself on
her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would immediately fall asleep,
called Dunyásha the maid to put out the candle, and before Dunyásha had left
the room had already passed into yet another happier world of dreams, where
everything was as light and beautiful as in reality, and even more so because it
was different.
Next day the countess called Borís aside and had a talk with him, after which
he ceased coming to the Rostóvs’.
CHAPTER XIV
On the thirty-first of December, New Year’s Eve, 1809 - 10 an old grandee of
Catherine’s day was giving a ball and midnight supper. The diplomatic corps and
the Emperor himself were to be present.
The grandee’s well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered with
innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit entrance which was
carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but dozens of police officers
and even the police master himself stood at the porch. Carriages kept driving
away and fresh ones arriving, with red-liveried footmen and footmen in plumed
hats. From the carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons,
while ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps which
were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly
over the baize at the entrance.
Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through the crowd
and caps were doffed.
“The Emperor?... No, a minister... prince... ambassador. Don’t you see the
plumes?...” was whispered among the crowd.
One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone and
mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.
A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostóvs, who were to be
present, were still hurrying to get dressed.
There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in the Rostóv
family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive, that the dresses would not
be ready, or that something would not be arranged as it should be.
Márya Ignátevna Perónskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at the court of
the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the countess and piloted
the provincial Rostóvs in Petersburg high society, was to accompany them to the
ball.
They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten o’clock,
but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were not yet dressed.
Natásha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight that morning
and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all day. All her powers since
morning had been concentrated on ensuring that they all—she herself, Mamma,
and Sónya—should be as well dressed as possible. Sónya and her mother put
themselves entirely in her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-colored
velvet dress, and the two girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on
their bodices and their hair dressed à la grecque.
Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks, and ears
washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the openwork silk stockings
and white satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the hairdressing was almost
done. Sónya was finishing dressing and so was the countess, but Natásha, who
had bustled about helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before
a looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sónya
stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till
it hurt her dainty finger, was fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went
through it.
“That’s not the way, that’s not the way, Sónya!” cried Natásha turning her
head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the maid who was dressing
it had not time to release. “That bow is not right. Come here!”
Sónya sat down and Natásha pinned the ribbon on differently.
“Allow me, Miss! I can’t do it like that,” said the maid who was holding
Natásha’s hair.
“Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That’s right, Sónya.”
“Aren’t you ready? It is nearly ten,” came the countess’ voice.
“Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?”
“I have only my cap to pin on.”
“Don’t do it without me!” called Natásha. “You won’t do it right.”
“But it’s already ten.”
They had decided to be at the ball by half-past ten, and Natásha had still to get
dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.
When her hair was done, Natásha, in her short petticoat from under which her
dancing shoes showed, and in her mother’s dressing jacket, ran up to Sónya,
scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother. Turning her mother’s head this way
and that, she fastened on the cap and, hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to
the maids who were turning up the hem of her skirt.
The cause of the delay was Natásha’s skirt, which was too long. Two maids
were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of thread. A third with
pins in her mouth was running about between the countess and Sónya, and a
fourth held the whole of the gossamer garment up high on one uplifted hand.
“Mávra, quicker, darling!”
“Give me my thimble, Miss, from there...”
“Whenever will you be ready?” asked the count coming to the door. “Here is
some scent. Perónskaya must be tired of waiting.”
“It’s ready, Miss,” said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze dress with
two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as if by this to express a
consciousness of the airiness and purity of what she held.
Natásha began putting on the dress.
“In a minute! In a minute! Don’t come in, Papa!” she cried to her father as he
opened the door—speaking from under the filmy skirt which still covered her
whole face.
Sónya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in. He was
wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and was perfumed and his
hair pomaded.
“Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!” cried Natásha, as she stood in the
middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.
“If you please, Miss! allow me,” said the maid, who on her knees was pulling
the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of her mouth to the other
with her tongue.
“Say what you like,” exclaimed Sónya, in a despairing voice as she looked at
Natásha, “say what you like, it’s still too long.”
Natásha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress was too
long.
“Really, madam, it is not at all too long,” said Mávra, crawling on her knees
after her young lady.
“Well, if it’s too long we’ll tack it up... we’ll tack it up in one minute,” said
the resolute Dunyásha taking a needle that was stuck on the front of her little
shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set to work once more.
At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in her cap and
velvet gown.
“Oo-oo, my beauty!” exclaimed the count, “she looks better than any of you!”
He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside fearing to be
rumpled.
“Mamma, your cap, more to this side,” said Natásha. “I’ll arrange it,” and she
rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up her skirt could not move
fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn off.
“Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!”
“Never mind, I’ll run it up, it won’t show,” said Dunyásha.
“What a beauty—a very queen!” said the nurse as she came to the door. “And
Sónya! They are lovely!”
At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and started. But they
had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.
Perónskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she had gone
through the same process as the Rostóvs, but with less flurry—for to her it was a
matter of routine. Her ugly old body was washed, perfumed, and powdered in
just the same way. She had washed behind her ears just as carefully, and when
she entered her drawing room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of
honor, her old lady’s maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostóvs’
servants had been.
She praised the Rostóvs’ toilets. They praised her taste and toilet, and at
eleven o’clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they settled themselves in
their carriages and drove off.
CHAPTER XV
Natásha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not once had
time to think of what lay before her.
In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage, she for
the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her there at the ball, in those
brightly lighted rooms—with music, flowers, dances, the Emperor, and all the
brilliant young people of Petersburg. The prospect was so splendid that she
hardly believed it would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill
darkness and closeness of the carriage. She understood all that awaited her only
when, after stepping over the red baize at the entrance, she entered the hall, took
off her fur cloak, and, beside Sónya and in front of her mother, mounted the
brightly illuminated stairs between the flowers. Only then did she remember how
she must behave at a ball, and tried to assume the majestic air she considered
indispensable for a girl on such an occasion. But, fortunately for her, she felt her
eyes growing misty, she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a hundred to the
minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She could not assume that pose,
which would have made her ridiculous, and she moved on almost fainting from
excitement and trying with all her might to conceal it. And this was the very
attitude that became her best. Before and behind them other visitors were
entering, also talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the
landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with diamonds and
pearls on their bare necks and arms.
Natásha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her reflection from the
others. All was blended into one brilliant procession. On entering the ballroom
the regular hum of voices, footsteps, and greetings deafened Natásha, and the
light and glitter dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had already
been standing at the door for half an hour repeating the same words to the
various arrivals, “Charmé de vous voir,” * greeted the Rostóvs and Perónskaya
in the same manner.
* “Delighted to see you.”
The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her black hair, both
curtsied in the same way, but the hostess’ eye involuntarily rested longer on the
slim Natásha. She looked at her and gave her alone a special smile in addition to
her usual smile as hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden,
irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The host also
followed Natásha with his eyes and asked the count which was his daughter.
“Charming!” said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.
In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting the
Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front rows of that crowd.
Natásha heard and felt that several people were asking about her and looking at
her. She realized that those noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to
calm her.
“There are some like ourselves and some worse,” she thought.
Perónskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important people at the
ball.
“That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man,” she said,
indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray curly hair, who was
surrounded by ladies laughing at something he said.
“Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezúkhova,” said
Perónskaya, indicating Hélène who had just entered. “How lovely! She is quite
equal to Márya Antónovna. See how the men, young and old, pay court to her.
Beautiful and clever... they say Prince —— is quite mad about her. But see,
those two, though not good-looking, are even more run after.”
She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very plain
daughter.
“She is a splendid match, a millionairess,” said Perónskaya. “And look, here
come her suitors.”
“That is Bezúkhova’s brother, Anatole Kurágin,” she said, indicating a
handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head erect,
looking at something over the heads of the ladies. “He’s handsome, isn’t he? I
hear they will marry him to that rich girl. But your cousin, Drubetskóy, is also
very attentive to her. They say she has millions. Oh yes, that’s the French
ambassador himself!” she replied to the countess’ inquiry about Caulaincourt.
“Looks as if he were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very
charming. No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still the
most beautiful of them all, our Márya Antónovna! And how simply she is
dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the universal Freemason,”
she went on, indicating Pierre. “Put him beside his wife and he looks a regular
buffoon!”
Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the crowd and
nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly as if he were passing
through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through, evidently looking for someone.
Natásha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, “the buffoon,” as
Perónskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for them, and for her in
particular. He had promised to be at the ball and introduce partners to her.
But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, dark man
of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a window talking to a
tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natásha at once recognized the shorter and
younger man in the white uniform: it was Bolkónski, who seemed to her to have
grown much younger, happier, and better-looking.
“There’s someone else we know—Bolkónski, do you see, Mamma?” said
Natásha, pointing out Prince Andrew. “You remember, he stayed a night with us
at Otrádnoe.”
“Oh, you know him?” said Perónskaya. “I can’t bear him. Il fait à présent la
pluie et le beau temps. * He’s too proud for anything. Takes after his father. And
he’s hand in glove with Speránski, writing some project or other. Just look how
he treats the ladies! There’s one talking to him and he has turned away,” she said,
pointing at him. “I’d give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies.”
* “He is all the rage just now.”
CHAPTER XVI
Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and then
back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor entered to the
sounds of music that had immediately struck up. Behind him walked his host and
hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing to right and left as if anxious to get the
first moments of the reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at
that time on account of the words that had been set to it, beginning: “Alexander,
Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite...” The Emperor passed on to the
drawing room, the crowd made a rush for the doors, and several persons with
excited faces hurried there and back again. Then the crowd hastily retired from
the drawing room door, at which the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess.
A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to
move aside. Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the
rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets. The men
began to choose partners and take their places for the polonaise.
Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing
room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the music. The host
followed with Márya Antónovna Narýshkina; then came ambassadors, ministers,
and various generals, whom Perónskaya diligently named. More than half the
ladies already had partners and were taking up, or preparing to take up, their
positions for the polonaise. Natásha felt that she would be left with her mother
and Sónya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not having
been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms hanging down, her
scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly, and with bated breath and
glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight before her, evidently prepared for the
height of joy or misery. She was not concerned about the Emperor or any of
those great people whom Perónskaya was pointing out—she had but one
thought: “Is it possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to
dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me? They do not
even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they were saying, ‘Ah, she’s
not the one I’m after, so it’s not worth looking at her!’ No, it’s impossible,” she
thought. “They must know how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and
how they would enjoy dancing with me.”
The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable time, had
begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natásha’s ears. She wanted to cry.
Perónskaya had left them. The count was at the other end of the room. She and
the countess and Sónya were standing by themselves as in the depths of a forest
amid that crowd of strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted by
anyone. Prince Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing them.
The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and looked
at Natásha as one looks at a wall. Borís passed them twice and each time turned
away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing, came up to them.
This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natásha—as if there were
nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did not listen to or
look at Véra, who was telling her something about her own green dress.
At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced with three)
and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the Rostóvs requesting
them to stand farther back, though as it was they were already close to the wall,
and from the gallery resounded the distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains
of a waltz. The Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but
no one had yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies,
went up to Countess Bezúkhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly raised her
hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him. The aide-de-camp, an
adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly round her waist, with confident
deliberation started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of the circle, then at
the corner of the room he caught Hélène’s left hand and turned her, the only
sound audible, apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of
the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his partner’s velvet
dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled round. Natásha gazed at
them and was ready to cry because it was not she who was dancing that first turn
of the waltz.
Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing stockings
and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in the front row of the
circle not far from the Rostóvs. Baron Firhoff was talking to him about the first
sitting of the Council of State to be held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely
connected with Speránski and participating in the work of the legislative
commission, could give reliable information about that sitting, concerning which
various rumors were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was saying, he
was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men intending to dance who had
not yet gathered courage to enter the circle.
Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor’s presence,
and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to dance.
Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
“You always dance. I have a protégée, the young Rostóva, here. Ask her,” he
said.
“Where is she?” asked Bolkónski. “Excuse me!” he added, turning to the
baron, “we will finish this conversation elsewhere—at a ball one must dance.”
He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated. The despairing, dejected
expression of Natásha’s face caught his eye. He recognized her, guessed her
feelings, saw that it was her début, remembered her conversation at the window,
and with an expression of pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostóva.
“Allow me to introduce you to my daughter,” said the countess, with
heightened color.
“I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess remembers
me,” said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite belying
Perónskaya’s remarks about his rudeness, and approaching Natásha he held out
his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed his invitation. He asked her
to waltz. That tremulous expression on Natásha’s face, prepared either for
despair or rapture, suddenly brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.
“I have long been waiting for you,” that frightened happy little girl seemed to
say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as she raised her hand to
Prince Andrew’s shoulder. They were the second couple to enter the circle.
Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers of his day and Natásha danced
exquisitely. Her little feet in their white satin dancing shoes did their work
swiftly, lightly, and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic
happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful—compared to
Hélène’s her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But Hélène
seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands of looks that had
scanned her person, while Natásha was like a girl exposed for the first time, who
would have felt very much ashamed had she not been assured that this was
absolutely necessary.
Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as possible
from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed to him, wishing also
to break up the circle of restraint he disliked, caused by the Emperor’s presence,
he danced, and had chosen Natásha because Pierre pointed her out to him and
because she was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he
embraced that slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close to him and
smiling so near him than the wine of her charm rose to his head, and he felt
himself revived and rejuvenated when after leaving her he stood breathing
deeply and watching the other dancers.
CHAPTER XVII
After Prince Andrew, Borís came up to ask Natásha for a dance, and then the
aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young men, so that,
flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous partners to Sónya, she did not
cease dancing all the evening. She noticed and saw nothing of what occupied
everyone else. Not only did she fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time
with the French ambassador, and how particularly gracious he was to a certain
lady, or that Prince So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and that
Hélène had great success and was honored by the special attention of So-and-so,
but she did not even see the Emperor, and only noticed that he had gone because
the ball became livelier after his departure. For one of the merry cotillions before
supper Prince Andrew was again her partner. He reminded her of their first
encounter in the Otrádnoe avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep that
moonlight night, and told her how he had involuntarily overheard her. Natásha
blushed at that recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if there had been
something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had overheard.
Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting
someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And such was Natásha,
with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her mistakes in speaking
French. With her he behaved with special care and tenderness, sitting beside her
and talking of the simplest and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy
grace. In the middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures,
Natásha, still out of breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer chose
her. She was tired and panting and evidently thought of declining, but
immediately put her hand gaily on the man’s shoulder, smiling at Prince Andrew.
“I’d be glad to sit beside you and rest: I’m tired; but you see how they keep
asking me, and I’m glad of it, I’m happy and I love everybody, and you and I
understand it all,” and much, much more was said in her smile. When her partner
left her Natásha ran across the room to choose two ladies for the figure.
“If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she will be my wife,”
said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own surprise, as he watched her. She
did go first to her cousin.
“What rubbish sometimes enters one’s head!” thought Prince Andrew, “but
what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original, that she won’t be
dancing here a month before she will be married.... Such as she are rare here,” he
thought, as Natásha, readjusting a rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled
herself beside him.
When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up to the
dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and asked his
daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natásha did not answer at once but
only looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: “How can you ask such a
question?”
“I have never enjoyed myself so much before!” she said, and Prince Andrew
noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her father and instantly
dropped again. Natásha was happier than she had ever been in her life. She was
at that height of bliss when one becomes completely kind and good and does not
believe in the possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.
At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the position his wife
occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and absent-minded. A deep furrow ran
across his forehead, and standing by a window he stared over his spectacles
seeing no one.
On her way to supper Natásha passed him.
Pierre’s gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of him. She
wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of her own happiness.
“How delightful it is, Count!” said she. “Isn’t it?”
Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.
“Yes, I am very glad,” he said.
“How can people be dissatisfied with anything?” thought Natásha. “Especially
such a capital fellow as Bezúkhov!” In Natásha’s eyes all the people at the ball
alike were good, kind, and splendid people, loving one another; none of them
capable of injuring another—and so they ought all to be happy.
CHAPTER XVIII
Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not dwell on it
long. “Yes, it was a very brilliant ball,” and then... “Yes, that little Rostóva is
very charming. There’s something fresh, original, un-Petersburg-like about her
that distinguishes her.” That was all he thought about yesterday’s ball, and after
his morning tea he set to work.
But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for work and
could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work, as he often did, and
was glad when he heard someone coming.
The visitor was Bítski, who served on various committees, frequented all the
societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new ideas and of
Speránski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger—one of those men who
choose their opinions like their clothes according to the fashion, but who for that
very reason appear to be the warmest partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat
before he ran into Prince Andrew’s room with a preoccupied air and at once
began talking. He had just heard particulars of that morning’s sitting of the
Council of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically. The
Emperor’s speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such as only
constitutional monarchs deliver. “The Sovereign plainly said that the Council
and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the government must rest not on
authority but on secure bases. The Emperor said that the fiscal system must be
reorganized and the accounts published,” recounted Bítski, emphasizing certain
words and opening his eyes significantly.
“Ah, yes! Today’s events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our history,” he
concluded.
Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the Council of State,
which he had so impatiently awaited and to which he had attached such
importance, and was surprised that this event, now that it had taken place, did
not affect him, and even seemed quite insignificant. He listened with quiet irony
to Bítski’s enthusiastic account of it. A very simple thought occurred to him:
“What does it matter to me or to Bítski what the Emperor was pleased to say at
the Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?”
And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest Prince Andrew
had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to dine that evening at
Speránski’s, “with only a few friends,” as the host had said when inviting him.
The prospect of that dinner in the intimate home circle of the man he so admired
had greatly interested Prince Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speránski
in his domestic surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.
At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house Speránski
owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room this small house,
remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a monastery), Prince
Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly gathering of Speránski’s
intimate acquaintances already assembled at five o’clock. There were no ladies
present except Speránski’s little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her
governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnítski, and Stolýpin. While still
in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato laugh—
a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone—it sounded like Speránski—
was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard
Speránski’s famous laugh, and this ringing, high-pitched laughter from a
statesman made a strange impression on him.
He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing between two
windows at a small table laid with hors-d’oeuvres. Speránski, wearing a gray
swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast, and evidently still the same waistcoat
and high white stock he had worn at the meeting of the Council of State, stood at
the table with a beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him. Magnítski,
addressing himself to Speránski, was relating an anecdote, and Speránski was
laughing in advance at what Magnítski was going to say. When Prince Andrew
entered the room Magnítski’s words were again crowned by laughter. Stolýpin
gave a deep bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais
laughed softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speránski in a high-pitched staccato
manner.
Still laughing, Speránski held out his soft white hand to Prince Andrew.
“Very pleased to see you, Prince,” he said. “One moment...” he went on,
turning to Magnítski and interrupting his story. “We have agreed that this is a
dinner for recreation, with not a word about business!” and turning again to the
narrator he began to laugh afresh.
Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speránski with astonishment, regret,
and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not Speránski but someone
else. Everything that had formerly appeared mysterious and fascinating in
Speránski suddenly became plain and unattractive.
At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed to consist
of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before Magnítski had finished his
story someone else was anxious to relate something still funnier. Most of the
anecdotes, if not relating to the state service, related to people in the service. It
seemed that in this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely
accepted that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good humored
ridicule. Speránski related how at the Council that morning a deaf dignitary,
when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so too. Gervais gave a long
account of an official revision, remarkable for the stupidity of everybody
concerned. Stolýpin, stuttering, broke into the conversation and began excitedly
talking of the abuses that existed under the former order of things—threatening
to give a serious turn to the conversation. Magnítski starting quizzing Stolýpin
about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and the talk reverted to its
former lively tone.
Evidently Speránski liked to rest after his labors and find amusement in a
circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his wish, tried to enliven him and
amuse themselves. But their gaiety seemed to Prince Andrew mirthless and
tiresome. Speránski’s high-pitched voice struck him unpleasantly, and the
incessant laughter grated on him like a false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh
and feared that he would be a damper on the spirits of the company, but no one
took any notice of his being out of harmony with the general mood. They all
seemed very gay.
He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his remarks were tossed
aside each time like a cork thrown out of the water, and he could not jest with
them.
There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was witty and
might have been funny, but it lacked just that something which is the salt of
mirth, and they were not even aware that such a thing existed.
After dinner Speránski’s daughter and her governess rose. He patted the little
girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that gesture, too, seemed unnatural
to Prince Andrew.
The men remained at table over their port—English fashion. In the midst of a
conversation that was started about Napoleon’s Spanish affairs, which they all
agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to express a contrary opinion.
Speránski smiled and, with an evident wish to prevent the conversation from
taking an unpleasant course, told a story that had no connection with the
previous conversation. For a few moments all were silent.
Having sat some time at table, Speránski corked a bottle of wine and,
remarking, “Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair,” passed it to the
servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk loudly went into the drawing
room. Two letters brought by a courier were handed to Speránski and he took
them to his study. As soon as he had left the room the general merriment stopped
and the guests began to converse sensibly and quietly with one another.
“Now for the recitation!” said Speránski on returning from his study. “A
wonderful talent!” he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnítski immediately
assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses in French which he
had composed about various well-known Petersburg people. He was interrupted
several times by applause. When the verses were finished Prince Andrew went
up to Speránski and took his leave.
“Where are you off to so early?” asked Speránski.
“I promised to go to a reception.”
They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those mirrorlike,
impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of him to have expected
anything from Speránski and from any of his own activities connected with him,
or ever to have attributed importance to what Speránski was doing. That precise,
mirthless laughter rang in Prince Andrew’s ears long after he had left the house.
When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something new. He
recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of his project of army
reform, which had been accepted for consideration and which they were trying
to pass over in silence simply because another, a very poor one, had already been
prepared and submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a
committee of which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully and at
what length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at those
meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all that related to the gist of the
business was evaded. He recalled his labors on the Legal Code, and how
painstakingly he had translated the articles of the Roman and French codes into
Russian, and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself
Boguchárovo, his occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazán; he
remembered the peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to
them the Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished that
he could have spent so much time on such useless work.
CHAPTER XIX
Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited before, and
among them at the Rostóvs’ with whom he had renewed acquaintance at the ball.
Apart from considerations of politeness which demanded the call, he wanted to
see that original, eager girl who had left such a pleasant impression on his mind,
in her own home.
Natásha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a dark-blue house
dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier than in her ball dress.
She and all the Rostóv family welcomed him as an old friend, simply and
cordially. The whole family, whom he had formerly judged severely, now
seemed to him to consist of excellent, simple, and kindly people. The old count’s
hospitality and good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a
pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrew could not refuse to stay to
dinner. “Yes,” he thought, “they are capital people, who of course have not the
slightest idea what a treasure they possess in Natásha; but they are kindly folk
and form the best possible setting for this strikingly poetic, charming girl,
overflowing with life!”
In Natásha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely alien
to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world, that in the
Otrádnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had already begun to
disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no longer and was no longer
alien to him, but he himself having entered it found in it a new enjoyment.
After dinner Natásha, at Prince Andrew’s request, went to the clavichord and
began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window talking to the ladies and
listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he ceased speaking and suddenly felt
tears choking him, a thing he had thought impossible for him. He looked at
Natásha as she sang, and something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt
happy and at the same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he
was ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His
disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The chief reason was
a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great
and illimitable within him and that limited and material something that he, and
even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.
As soon as Natásha had finished she went up to him and asked how he liked
her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling that she ought not to
have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and said he liked her singing as he liked
everything she did.
Prince Andrew left the Rostóvs’ late in the evening. He went to bed from
habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having lit his candle he sat up in
bed, then got up, then lay down again not at all troubled by his sleeplessness: his
soul was as fresh and joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God’s
own fresh air. It did not enter his head that he was in love with Natásha; he was
not thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself, and in consequence all
life appeared in a new light. “Why do I strive, why do I toil in this narrow,
confined frame, when life, all life with all its joys, is open to me?” said he to
himself. And for the first time for a very long while he began making happy
plans for the future. He decided that he must attend to his son’s education by
finding a tutor and putting the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire from the
service and go abroad, and see England, Switzerland and Italy. “I must use my
freedom while I feel so much strength and youth in me,” he said to himself.
“Pierre was right when he said one must believe in the possibility of happiness in
order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but
while one has life one must live and be happy!” thought he.
CHAPTER XX
One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an immaculate brand-
new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed forward over his temples as the
Emperor Alexander wore his hair.
“I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately she could not
grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more fortunate with you,” he said
with a smile.
“What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service.”
“I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count” (Berg said this with
perfect conviction that this information could not but be agreeable), “and so I
wish to arrange just a small party for my own and my wife’s friends.” (He smiled
still more pleasantly.) “I wished to ask the countess and you to do me the honor
of coming to tea and to supper.”
Only Countess Hélène, considering the society of such people as the Bergs
beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an invitation. Berg explained
so clearly why he wanted to collect at his house a small but select company, and
why this would give him pleasure, and why though he grudged spending money
on cards or anything harmful, he was prepared to run into some expense for the
sake of good society—that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to come.
“But don’t be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten minutes to eight,
please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is coming. He is very good to
me. We shall have supper, Count. So you will do me the favor.”
Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at the Bergs’
house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.
Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were ready for
their guests’ arrival.
In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and pictures and new
furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely buttoned up in his new uniform, sat
beside his wife explaining to her that one always could and should be acquainted
with people above one, because only then does one get satisfaction from
acquaintances.
“You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
managed from my first promotion.” (Berg measured his life not by years but by
promotions.) “My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only waiting for a
vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to be your husband.”
(He rose and kissed Véra’s hand, and on the way to her straightened out a
turned-up corner of the carpet.) “And how have I obtained all this? Chiefly by
knowing how to choose my aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must
be conscientious and methodical.”
Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and paused,
reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak woman who could
not understand all that constitutes a man’s dignity, what it was ein Mann zu sein.
* Véra at the same time smiling with a sense of superiority over her good,
conscientious husband, who all the same understood life wrongly, as according
to Véra all men did. Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and
foolish. Véra, judging only by her husband and generalizing from that
observation, supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are
conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.
* To be a man.
Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her lace fichu for
which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on the lips.
“The only thing is, we mustn’t have children too soon,” he continued,
following an unconscious sequence of ideas.
“Yes,” answered Véra, “I don’t at all want that. We must live for society.”
“Princess Yusúpova wore one exactly like this,” said Berg, pointing to the
fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
Just then Count Bezúkhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced at one
another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally claiming the
honor of this visit.
“This is what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,” thought Berg.
“This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself.”
“But please don’t interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests,” said Véra,
“because I know what interests each of them and what to say to different
people.”
Berg smiled again.
“It can’t be helped: men must sometimes have masculine conversation,” said
he.
They received Pierre in their small, new drawing room, where it was
impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry, neatness, and
order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange that Berg, having
generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an armchair or of the sofa for his
dear guest, but being apparently painfully undecided on the matter himself,
eventually left the visitor to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the
symmetry by moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Véra immediately began
their evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain their
guest.
Véra, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be entertained with
conversation about the French embassy, at once began accordingly. Berg, having
decided that masculine conversation was required, interrupted his wife’s remarks
and touched on the question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped
from the general subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made him
to take part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had declined them.
Though the conversation was very incoherent and Véra was angry at the
intrusion of the masculine element, both husband and wife felt with satisfaction
that, even if only one guest was present, their evening had begun very well and
was as like as two peas to every other evening party with its talk, tea, and lighted
candles.
Before long Borís, Berg’s old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Véra. After Borís
came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the Rostóvs, and the
party became unquestionably exactly like all other evening parties. Berg and
Véra could not repress their smiles of satisfaction at the sight of all this
movement in their drawing room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the
rustling of dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just as
everybody always has it, especially so the general, who admired the apartment,
patted Berg on the shoulder, and with parental authority superintended the
setting out of the table for boston. The general sat down by Count Ilyá Rostóv,
who was next to himself the most important guest. The old people sat with the
old, the young with the young, and the hostess at the tea table, on which stood
exactly the same kind of cakes in a silver cake basket as the Panins had at their
party. Everything was just as it was everywhere else.
CHAPTER XXI
Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston with Count
Rostóv, the general, and the colonel. At the card table he happened to be directly
facing Natásha, and was struck by a curious change that had come over her since
the ball. She was silent, and not only less pretty than at the ball, but only
redeemed from plainness by her look of gentle indifference to everything
around.
“What’s the matter with her?” thought Pierre, glancing at her. She was sitting
by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without looking at him, made some
reply to Borís who sat down beside her. After playing out a whole suit and to his
partner’s delight taking five tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of
someone who had entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced
again at Natásha.
“What has happened to her?” he asked himself with still greater surprise.
Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her with a look
of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was looking up at him, flushed
and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And the bright glow of some
inner fire that had been suppressed was again alight in her. She was completely
transformed and from a plain girl had again become what she had been at the
ball.
Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and youthful
expression in his friend’s face.
Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now with his
back to Natásha and now facing her, but during the whole of the six rubbers he
watched her and his friend.
“Something very important is happening between them,” thought Pierre, and a
feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him and made him neglect the
game.
After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use playing like
that, and Pierre was released. Natásha on one side was talking with Sónya and
Borís, and Véra with a subtle smile was saying something to Prince Andrew.
Pierre went up to his friend and, asking whether they were talking secrets, sat
down beside them. Véra, having noticed Prince Andrew’s attentions to Natásha,
decided that at a party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the tender passion
were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrew was
alone, began a conversation with him about feelings in general and about her
sister. With so intellectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she
felt that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.
When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Véra was being carried away by
her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed, a thing that
rarely happened with him.
“What do you think?” Véra was saying with an arch smile. “You are so
discerning, Prince, and understand people’s characters so well at a glance. What
do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her attachments? Could she,
like other women” (Véra meant herself), “love a man once for all and remain
true to him forever? That is what I consider true love. What do you think,
Prince?”
“I know your sister too little,” replied Prince Andrew, with a sarcastic smile
under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, “to be able to solve so
delicate a question, and then I have noticed that the less attractive a woman is the
more constant she is likely to be,” he added, and looked up at Pierre who was
just approaching them.
“Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days,” continued Véra—mentioning “our
days” as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they
have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of “our days” and that human
characteristics change with the times—“in our days a girl has so much freedom
that the pleasure of being courted often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be
confessed that Natalie is very susceptible.” This return to the subject of Natalie
caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about to rise,
but Véra continued with a still more subtle smile:
“I think no one has been more courted than she,” she went on, “but till quite
lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you know, Count,” she said to
Pierre, “even our dear cousin Borís, who, between ourselves, was very far gone
in the land of tenderness...” (alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that
time).
Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
“You are friendly with Borís, aren’t you?” asked Véra.
“Yes, I know him....”
“I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natásha?”
“Oh, there was childish love?” suddenly asked Prince Andrew, blushing
unexpectedly.
“Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le cousinage
est un dangereux voisinage. * Don’t you think so?”
* “Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.”
“Oh, undoubtedly!” said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very careful with his
fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these jesting remarks he rose,
taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.
“Well?” asked Pierre, seeing his friend’s strange animation with surprise, and
noticing the glance he turned on Natásha as he rose.
“I must... I must have a talk with you,” said Prince Andrew. “You know that
pair of women’s gloves?” (He referred to the Masonic gloves given to a newly
initiated Brother to present to the woman he loved.) “I... but no, I will talk to you
later on,” and with a strange light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements,
Prince Andrew approached Natásha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how
Prince Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.
But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he should
take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on the affairs in
Spain.
Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his face. The
party was very successful and quite like other parties he had seen. Everything
was similar: the ladies’ subtle talk, the cards, the general raising his voice at the
card table, and the samovar and the tea cakes; only one thing was lacking that he
had always seen at the evening parties he wished to imitate. They had not yet
had a loud conversation among the men and a dispute about something important
and clever. Now the general had begun such a discussion and so Berg drew
Pierre to it.
CHAPTER XXII
Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with the
Rostóvs and spent the rest of the day there.
Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came, and
without concealing it he tried to be with Natásha all day. Not only in the soul of
the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natásha, but in the whole house, there
was a feeling of awe at something important that was bound to happen. The
countess looked with sad and sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he
talked to Natásha and timidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as
soon as he looked her way. Sónya was afraid to leave Natásha and afraid of
being in the way when she was with them. Natásha grew pale, in a panic of
expectation, when she remained alone with him for a moment. Prince Andrew
surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wanted to say something to her but
could not bring himself to do so.
In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to Natásha
and whispered: “Well, what?”
“Mamma! For heaven’s sake don’t ask me anything now! One can’t talk about
that,” said Natásha.
But all the same that night Natásha, now agitated and now frightened, lay a
long time in her mother’s bed gazing straight before her. She told her how he had
complimented her, how he told her he was going abroad, asked her where they
were going to spend the summer, and then how he had asked her about Borís.
“But such a... such a... never happened to me before!” she said. “Only I feel
afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I’m with him. What does that
mean? Does it mean that it’s the real thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?”
“No, my love; I am frightened myself,” answered her mother. “Now go!”
“All the same I shan’t sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy! Mummy! such
a thing never happened to me before,” she said, surprised and alarmed at the
feeling she was aware of in herself. “And could we ever have thought!...”
It seemed to Natásha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andrew at
Otrádnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she feared this strange,
unexpected happiness of meeting again the very man she had then chosen (she
was firmly convinced she had done so) and of finding him, as it seemed, not
indifferent to her.
“And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg while we
are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that ball. It is fate. Clearly
it is fate that everything led up to this! Already then, directly I saw him I felt
something peculiar.”
“What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them...” said her
mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andrew had written in
Natásha’s album.
“Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?”
“Don’t, Natásha! Pray to God. ‘Marriages are made in heaven,’” said her
mother.
“Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!” cried Natásha,
shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.
At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and telling him of his
love for Natásha and his firm resolve to make her his wife.
That day Countess Hélène had a reception at her house. The French
ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of late become
a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies and gentlemen. Pierre, who
had come downstairs, walked through the rooms and struck everyone by his
preoccupied, absent-minded, and morose air.
Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous depression and had
made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the intimacy of his wife with the royal
prince, Pierre had unexpectedly been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and
from that time he had begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and
dark thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener than before.
At the same time the feeling he had noticed between his protégée Natásha and
Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by the contrast between his own position
and his friend’s. He tried equally to avoid thinking about his wife, and about
Natásha and Prince Andrew; and again everything seemed to him insignificant in
comparison with eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and he
forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to drive away
the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after he had left the
countess’ apartments, he was sitting upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying
out the original transaction of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his
low room cloudy with tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince
Andrew.
“Ah, it’s you!” said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air. “And I, you
see, am hard at it.” He pointed to his manuscript book with that air of escaping
from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at their work.
Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life on his
face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look, smiled at him with
the egotism of joy.
“Well, dear heart,” said he, “I wanted to tell you about it yesterday and I have
come to do so today. I never experienced anything like it before. I am in love,
my friend!”
Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on
the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
“With Natásha Rostóva, yes?” said he.
“Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it, but the
feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and suffered, but I would
not exchange even that torment for anything in the world, I have not lived till
now. At last I live, but I can’t live without her! But can she love me?... I am too
old for her.... Why don’t you speak?”
“I? I? What did I tell you?” said Pierre suddenly, rising and beginning to pace
up and down the room. “I always thought it.... That girl is such a treasure... she is
a rare girl.... My dear friend, I entreat you, don’t philosophize, don’t doubt,
marry, marry, marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you.”
“But what of her?”
“She loves you.”
“Don’t talk rubbish...” said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into Pierre’s
eyes.
“She does, I know,” Pierre cried fiercely.
“But do listen,” returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. “Do you
know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone.”
“Well, go on, go on. I am very glad,” said Pierre, and his face really changed,
his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince Andrew. Prince
Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a different, quite a new man. Where was
his spleen, his contempt for life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person
to whom he made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in
his soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, said he
could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father’s caprice, and spoke of how
he would either make his father consent to this marriage and love her, or would
do without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that had mastered him as
at something strange, apart from and independent of himself.
“I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of such
love,” said Prince Andrew. “It is not at all the same feeling that I knew in the
past. The whole world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is she,
and there all is joy, hope, light: the other half is everything where she is not, and
there is all gloom and darkness....”
“Darkness and gloom,” reiterated Pierre: “yes, yes, I understand that.”
“I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very happy! You
understand me? I know you are glad for my sake.”
“Yes, yes,” Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched and sad
expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew’s lot appeared to him, the
gloomier seemed his own.
CHAPTER XXIII
Prince Andrew needed his father’s consent to his marriage, and to obtain this
he started for the country next day.
His father received his son’s communication with external composure, but
inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his life
or introduce anything new into it, when his own life was already ending. “If only
they would let me end my days as I want to,” thought the old man, “then they
might do as they please.” With his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he
reserved for important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole
matter.
In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards birth, wealth,
or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young as he had been and his
health was poor (the old man laid special stress on this), while she was very
young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a
girl. “Fourthly and finally,” the father said, looking ironically at his son, “I beg
you to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as you wanted to for
a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your love or passion or obstinacy—
as you please—is still as great, marry! And that’s my last word on it. Mind, the
last...” concluded the prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make
him alter his decision.
Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his feelings, or his
fiancée’s, would not stand a year’s test, or that he (the old prince himself) would
die before then, and he decided to conform to his father’s wish—to propose, and
postpone the wedding for a year.
Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostóvs, Prince
Andrew returned to Petersburg.
Next day after her talk with her mother Natásha expected Bolkónski all day,
but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the same. Pierre did not
come either and Natásha, not knowing that Prince Andrew had gone to see his
father, could not explain his absence to herself.
Three weeks passed in this way. Natásha had no desire to go out anywhere
and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and listless; she wept
secretly at night and did not go to her mother in the evenings. She blushed
continually and was irritable. It seemed to her that everybody knew about her
disappointment and was laughing at her and pitying her. Strong as was her
inward grief, this wound to her vanity intensified her misery.
Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly began to
cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not know why it is being
punished.
The countess began to soothe Natásha, who after first listening to her mother’s
words, suddenly interrupted her:
“Leave off, Mamma! I don’t think, and don’t want to think about it! He just
came and then left off, left off....”
Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and went on
quietly:
“And I don’t at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I have now
become quite calm, quite calm.”
The day after this conversation Natásha put on the old dress which she knew
had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the mornings, and that
day she returned to the old way of life which she had abandoned since the ball.
Having finished her morning tea she went to the ballroom, which she
particularly liked for its loud resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When
she had finished her first exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and
sang a musical phrase that particularly pleased her. She listened joyfully (as
though she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes reverberating, filling
the whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying away; and all at once she felt
cheerful. “What’s the good of making so much of it? Things are nice as it is,”
she said to herself, and she began walking up and down the room, not stepping
simply on the resounding parquet but treading with each step from the heel to the
toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of shoes) and listening to the regular tap
of the heel and creak of the toe as gladly as she had to the sounds of her own
voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it. “There, that’s me!” the expression of
her face seemed to say as she caught sight of herself. “Well, and very nice too! I
need nobody.”
A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room but she
would not let him, and having closed the door behind him continued her walk.
That morning she had returned to her favorite mood—love of, and delight in,
herself. “How charming that Natásha is!” she said again, speaking as some third,
collective, male person. “Pretty, a good voice, young, and in nobody’s way if
only they leave her in peace.” But however much they left her in peace she could
not now be at peace, and immediately felt this.
In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, “At home?” and then
footsteps were heard. Natásha was looking at the mirror, but did not see herself.
She listened to the sounds in the hall. When she saw herself, her face was pale. It
was he. She knew this for certain, though she hardly heard his voice through the
closed doors.
Pale and agitated, Natásha ran into the drawing room.
“Mamma! Bolkónski has come!” she said. “Mamma, it is awful, it is
unbearable! I don’t want... to be tormented? What am I to do?...”
Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room with an
agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natásha his face brightened. He
kissed the countess’ hand and Natásha’s, and sat down beside the sofa.
“It is long since we had the pleasure...” began the countess, but Prince
Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question, obviously in haste
to say what he had to.
“I have not been to see you all this time because I have been at my father’s. I
had to talk over a very important matter with him. I only got back last night,” he
said glancing at Natásha; “I want to have a talk with you, Countess,” he added
after a moment’s pause.
The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.
“I am at your disposal,” she murmured.
Natásha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so: something
gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared straight at Prince
Andrew with wide-open eyes.
“At once? This instant!... No, it can’t be!” she thought.
Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she was not
mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be decided.
“Go, Natásha! I will call you,” said the countess in a whisper.
Natásha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew and at her
mother and went out.
“I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter’s hand,” said Prince
Andrew.
The countess’ face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.
“Your offer...” she began at last sedately. He remained silent, looking into her
eyes. “Your offer...” (she grew confused) “is agreeable to us, and I accept your
offer. I am glad. And my husband... I hope... but it will depend on her....”
“I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it to me?” said
Prince Andrew.
“Yes,” replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and with a mixed
feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips to his forehead as he
stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him as a son, but felt that to her he
was a stranger and a terrifying man. “I am sure my husband will consent,” said
the countess, “but your father...”
“My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express condition of
his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a year. And I wished to tell
you of that,” said Prince Andrew.
“It is true that Natásha is still young, but—so long as that?...”
“It is unavoidable,” said Prince Andrew with a sigh.
“I will send her to you,” said the countess, and left the room.
“Lord have mercy upon us!” she repeated while seeking her daughter.
Sónya said that Natásha was in her bedroom. Natásha was sitting on the bed,
pale and dry-eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering something as she
rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped up and flew to her.
“Well, Mamma?... Well?...”
“Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand,” said the countess, coldly it
seemed to Natásha. “Go... go,” said the mother, sadly and reproachfully, with a
deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.
Natásha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When she
came in and saw him she paused. “Is it possible that this stranger has now
become everything to me?” she asked herself, and immediately answered, “Yes,
everything! He alone is now dearer to me than everything in the world.” Prince
Andrew came up to her with downcast eyes.
“I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?”
He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned expression of her
face. Her face said: “Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot but know? Why
speak, when words cannot express what one feels?”
She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes, yes!” Natásha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed loudly and,
catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Oh, I am so happy!” she replied, smiled through her tears, bent over closer to
him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether she might, and then kissed
him.
Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find in his
heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly changed; there was
no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of desire, but there was pity for
her feminine and childish weakness, fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an
oppressive yet joyful sense of the duty that now bound him to her forever. The
present feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger and
more serious.
“Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?” asked Prince Andrew,
still looking into her eyes.
“Is it possible that I—the ‘chit of a girl,’ as everybody called me,” thought
Natásha—“is it possible that I am now to be the wife and the equal of this
strange, dear, clever man whom even my father looks up to? Can it be true? Can
it be true that there can be no more playing with life, that now I am grown up,
that on me now lies a responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what
did he ask me?”
“No,” she replied, but she had not understood his question.
“Forgive me!” he said. “But you are so young, and I have already been
through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know yourself.”
Natásha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing to take in the
meaning of his words.
“Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be,” continued Prince
Andrew, “it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask you to make me
happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall remain a secret, and
should you find that you do not love me, or should you come to love...” said
Prince Andrew with an unnatural smile.
“Why do you say that?” Natásha interrupted him. “You know that from the
very day you first came to Otrádnoe I have loved you,” she cried, quite
convinced that she spoke the truth.
“In a year you will learn to know yourself....”
“A whole year!” Natásha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that the
marriage was to be postponed for a year. “But why a year? Why a year?...”
Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay. Natásha did
not hear him.
“And can’t it be helped?” she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply, but his face
expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.
“It’s awful! Oh, it’s awful! awful!” Natásha suddenly cried, and again burst
into sobs. “I shall die, waiting a year: it’s impossible, it’s awful!” She looked
into her lover’s face and saw in it a look of commiseration and perplexity.
“No, no! I’ll do anything!” she said, suddenly checking her tears. “I am so
happy.”
The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed couple their
blessing.
From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostóvs’ as Natásha’s
affianced lover.
CHAPTER XXIV
No betrothal ceremony took place and Natásha’s engagement to Bolkónski
was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said that as he was
responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole burden of it; that he had
given his word and bound himself forever, but that he did not wish to bind
Natásha and gave her perfect freedom. If after six months she felt that she did
not love him she would have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natásha
nor her parents wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came
every day to the Rostóvs’, but did not behave to Natásha as an affianced lover:
he did not use the familiar thou, but said you to her, and kissed only her hand.
After their engagement, quite different, intimate, and natural relations sprang up
between them. It was as if they had not known each other till now. Both liked to
recall how they had regarded each other when as yet they were nothing to one
another; they felt themselves now quite different beings: then they were
artificial, now natural and sincere. At first the family felt some constraint in
intercourse with Prince Andrew; he seemed a man from another world, and for a
long time Natásha trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them
all that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of them, and
that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to be. After a few days they
grew accustomed to him, and without restraint in his presence pursued their
usual way of life, in which he took his part. He could talk about rural economy
with the count, fashions with the countess and Natásha, and about albums and
fancywork with Sónya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in
his presence expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the
evident omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew’s coming to Otrádnoe and
their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natásha and Prince
Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and Andrew’s encounter
with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents betokening that it had to be.
In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always accompanies
the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting together everyone kept
silent. Sometimes the others would get up and go away and the couple, left
alone, still remained silent. They rarely spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew
was afraid and ashamed to speak of it. Natásha shared this as she did all his
feelings, which she constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about
his son. Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did now—Natásha particularly liked
it in him—and said that his son would not live with them.
“Why not?” asked Natásha in a frightened tone.
“I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides...”
“How I should have loved him!” said Natásha, immediately guessing his
thought; “but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding fault with us.”
Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask his
advice about Pétya’s education or Nicholas’ service. The old countess sighed as
she looked at them; Sónya was always getting frightened lest she should be in
the way and tried to find excuses for leaving them alone, even when they did not
wish it. When Prince Andrew spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natásha
listened to him with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he
gazed attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in perplexity:
“What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover something by looking at
me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?” Sometimes she fell into one of
the mad, merry moods characteristic of her, and then she particularly loved to
hear and see how Prince Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but when he did
he abandoned himself entirely to his laughter, and after such a laugh she always
felt nearer to him. Natásha would have been completely happy if the thought of
the separation awaiting her and drawing near had not terrified her, just as the
mere thought of it made him turn pale and cold.
On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought with him
Pierre, who had not been to the Rostóvs’ once since the ball. Pierre seemed
disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the countess, and Natásha sat
down beside a little chess table with Sónya, thereby inviting Prince Andrew to
come too. He did so.
“You have known Bezúkhov a long time?” he asked. “Do you like him?”
“Yes, he’s a dear, but very absurd.”
And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of his
absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.
“Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known him from
childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,” Prince Andrew said with
sudden seriousness—“I am going away and heaven knows what may happen.
You may cease to... all right, I know I am not to say that. Only this, then:
whatever may happen to you when I am not here...”
“What can happen?”
“Whatever trouble may come,” Prince Andrew continued, “I beg you,
Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for advice and
help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but he has a heart of gold.”
Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sónya, nor Prince Andrew himself
could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would act on Natásha.
Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that day, dry-eyed, occupied
with most trivial matters as if not understanding what awaited her. She did not
even cry when, on taking leave, he kissed her hand for the last time. “Don’t go!”
she said in a tone that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and
which he remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone; but
for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in anything and
only saying now and then, “Oh, why did he go away?”
But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around her, she
recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and became her old self
again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, as a child gets up after a
long illness with a changed expression of face.
CHAPTER XXV
During that year after his son’s departure, Prince Nicholas Bolkónski’s health
and temper became much worse. He grew still more irritable, and it was Princess
Mary who generally bore the brunt of his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He
seemed carefully to seek out her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as
harshly as possible. Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys
—her nephew, little Nicholas, and religion—and these were the favorite subjects
of the prince’s attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken of he would bring
round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting and spoiling of
children. “You want to make him”—little Nicholas—“into an old maid like
yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants a son and not an old maid,” he would say.
Or, turning to Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary’s
presence how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them.
He continually hurt Princess Mary’s feelings and tormented her, but it cost her
no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame toward her, or could her father,
whom she knew loved her in spite of it all, be unjust? And what is justice? The
princess never thought of that proud word “justice.” All the complex laws of
man centered for her in one clear and simple law—the law of love and self-
sacrifice taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He
Himself was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other
people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.
During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had been gay,
gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known him for a long time
past. She felt that something had happened to him, but he said nothing to her
about his love. Before he left he had a long talk with his father about something,
and Princess Mary noticed that before his departure they were dissatisfied with
one another.
Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend Julie
Karágina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls dream) of marrying
to her brother, and who was at that time in mourning for her own brother, killed
in Turkey.
Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.
Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a special
providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and your excellent
mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone, can—I will not say comfort
us—but save us from despair. Religion alone can explain to us what without its
help man cannot comprehend: why, for what cause, kind and noble beings able
to find happiness in life—not merely harming no one but necessary to the
happiness of others—are called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful
persons, or such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left living. The
first death I saw, and one I shall never forget—that of my dear sister-in-law—left
that impression on me. Just as you ask destiny why your splendid brother had to
die, so I asked why that angel Lise, who not only never wronged anyone, but in
whose soul there were never any unkind thoughts, had to die. And what do you
think, dear friend? Five years have passed since then, and already I, with my
petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in what way
that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness of the Creator, whose
every action, though generally incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of
His infinite love for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically
innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother’s duties. As a young wife
she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been so as a mother. As it is,
not only has she left us, and particularly Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets
and memories, but probably she will there receive a place I dare not hope for
myself. But not to speak of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the
most beneficent influence on me and on my brother in spite of all our grief.
Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not occur to me; I should
then have dismissed them with horror, but now they are very clear and certain. I
write all this to you, dear friend, only to convince you of the Gospel truth which
has become for me a principle of life: not a single hair of our heads will fall
without His will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for us, and so
whatever befalls us is for our good.
You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my wish to
see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You will be surprised to hear
that the reason for this is Buonaparte! The case is this: my father’s health is
growing noticeably worse, he cannot stand any contradiction and is becoming
irritable. This irritability is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions.
He cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal terms with
all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own, the grandson of the
Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite indifferent to politics, but from my
father’s remarks and his talks with Michael Ivánovich I know all that goes on in
the world and especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at
Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not accepted as a great man, still less
as Emperor of France. And my father cannot stand this. It seems to me that it is
chiefly because of his political views that my father is reluctant to speak of going
to Moscow; for he foresees the encounters that would result from his way of
expressing his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might derive from
a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the disputes about Buonaparte
which would be inevitable. In any case it will be decided very shortly.
Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother Andrew’s
absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much of late. After his
sorrow he only this year quite recovered his spirits. He has again become as I
used to know him when a child: kind, affectionate, with that heart of gold to
which I know no equal. He has realized, it seems to me, that life is not over for
him. But together with this mental change he has grown physically much
weaker. He has become thinner and more nervous. I am anxious about him and
glad he is taking this trip abroad which the doctors recommended long ago. I
hope it will cure him. You write that in Petersburg he is spoken of as one of the
most active, cultivated, and capable of the young men. Forgive my vanity as a
relation, but I never doubted it. The good he has done to everybody here, from
his peasants up to the gentry, is incalculable. On his arrival in Petersburg he
received only his due. I always wonder at the way rumors fly from Petersburg to
Moscow, especially such false ones as that you write about—I mean the report of
my brother’s betrothal to the little Rostóva. I do not think my brother will ever
marry again, and certainly not her; and this is why: first, I know that though he
rarely speaks about the wife he has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep
in his heart for him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a
stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl is not the kind of girl
who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think he would choose her for a wife,
and frankly I do not wish it. But I am running on too long and am at the end of
my second sheet. Good-by, my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and
mighty care. My dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.
MARY
CHAPTER XXVI
In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected letter from
Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her strange and surprising news.
He informed her of his engagement to Natásha Rostóva. The whole letter
breathed loving rapture for his betrothed and tender and confiding affection for
his sister. He wrote that he had never loved as he did now and that only now did
he understand and know what life was. He asked his sister to forgive him for not
having told her of his resolve when he had last visited Bald Hills, though he had
spoken of it to his father. He had not done so for fear Princess Mary should ask
her father to give his consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt of his
displeasure without attaining her object. “Besides,” he wrote, “the matter was
not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father then insisted on a delay of a
year and now already six months, half of that period, have passed, and my
resolution is firmer than ever. If the doctors did not keep me here at the spas I
should be back in Russia, but as it is I have to postpone my return for three
months. You know me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I
have been and always shall be independent; but to go against his will and arouse
his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a short time, would
destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him about the same question,
and beg you to choose a good moment to hand him the letter and to let me know
how he looks at the whole matter and whether there is hope that he may consent
to reduce the term by four months.”
After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave the letter to
her father. The next day the old prince said to her quietly:
“Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won’t be long—I shall
soon set him free.”
The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her speak and,
raising his voice more and more, cried:
“Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich, eh? Yes,
a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell him that he may marry
tomorrow if he likes. She will be little Nicholas’ stepmother and I’ll marry
Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He mustn’t be without a stepmother either! Only one
thing, no more women are wanted in my house—let him marry and live by
himself. Perhaps you will go and live with him too?” he added, turning to
Princess Mary. “Go in heaven’s name! Go out into the frost... the frost... the
frost!”
After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the matter. But
repressed vexation at his son’s poor-spirited behavior found expression in his
treatment of his daughter. To his former pretexts for irony a fresh one was now
added—allusions to stepmothers and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
“Why shouldn’t I marry her?” he asked his daughter. “She’ll make a splendid
princess!”
And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary noticed that her
father was really associating more and more with the Frenchwoman. She wrote
to Prince Andrew about the reception of his letter, but comforted him with hopes
of reconciling their father to the idea.
Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and religion were
Princess Mary’s joys and consolations; but besides that, since everyone must
have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the profoundest depths of her heart had a
hidden dream and hope that supplied the chief consolation of her life. This
comforting dream and hope were given her by God’s folk—the half-witted and
other pilgrims who visited her without the prince’s knowledge. The longer she
lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the greater was her
wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here
on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that
impossible, visionary, sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she
died, but that was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness to another
woman. Her father objected to this because he wanted a more distinguished and
wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered and tormented
one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls, for the attainment of
benefits which endure but for an instant. Not only do we know this ourselves,
but Christ, the Son of God, came down to earth and told us that this life is but for
a moment and is a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it.
“How is it that no one realizes this?” thought Princess Mary. “No one except
these despised God’s folk who, wallet on back, come to me by the back door,
afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear of ill-usage by him but for fear of
causing him to sin. To leave family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare,
in order without clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place to
place under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for all—for
those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one: higher than that
life and truth there is no life or truth!”
There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty called
Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot and worn heavy
chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her. Once, when in a room with a
lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia was talking of her life, the thought that
Theodosia alone had found the true path of life suddenly came to Princess Mary
with such force that she resolved to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia
had gone to sleep Princess Mary thought about this for a long time, and at last
made up her mind that, strange as it might seem, she must go on a pilgrimage.
She disclosed this thought to no one but to her confessor, Father Akínfi, the
monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise of a present for the
pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim’s complete costume for herself: a
coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching
the chest of drawers containing this secret treasure, Princess Mary paused,
uncertain whether the time had not already come to put her project into
execution.
Often, listening to the pilgrims’ tales, she was so stimulated by their simple
speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep meaning, that several times
she was on the point of abandoning everything and running away from home. In
imagination she already pictured herself by Theodosia’s side, dressed in coarse
rags, walking with a staff, a wallet on her back, along the dusty road, directing
her wanderings from one saint’s shrine to another, free from envy, earthly love,
or desire, and reaching at last the place where there is no more sorrow or
sighing, but eternal joy and bliss.
“I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to get used to
it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on till my legs fail, and I’ll lie
down and die somewhere, and shall at last reach that eternal, quiet haven, where
there is neither sorrow nor sighing...” thought Princess Mary.
But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko (Nicholas),
her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that she was a sinner who loved
her father and little nephew more than God.
BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11
CHAPTER I
The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor—idleness—was a condition
of the first man’s blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of
idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not only because we have to seek our
bread in the sweat of our brows, but because our moral nature is such that we
cannot be both idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we
are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though idle he was
fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man’s primitive
blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot
of a whole class—the military. The chief attraction of military service has
consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
Nicholas Rostóv experienced this blissful condition to the full when, after
1807, he continued to serve in the Pávlograd regiment, in which he already
commanded the squadron he had taken over from Denísov.
Rostóv had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked and
respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was well contented
with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters from home more frequent
complaints from his mother that their affairs were falling into greater and greater
disorder, and that it was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his
old parents.
Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to take him away
from surroundings in which, protected from all the entanglements of life, he was
living so calmly and quietly. He felt that sooner or later he would have to re-
enter that whirlpool of life, with its embarrassments and affairs to be
straightened out, its accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties,
society, and with Sónya’s love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully
difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold, formal letters in
French, beginning: “My dear Mamma,” and ending: “Your obedient son,” which
said nothing of when he would return. In 1810 he received letters from his
parents, in which they told him of Natásha’s engagement to Bolkónski, and that
the wedding would be in a year’s time because the old prince made difficulties.
This letter grieved and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that
Natásha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be
lost to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted not to
have been there to show that fellow Bolkónski that connection with him was no
such great honor after all, and that if he loved Natásha he might dispense with
permission from his dotard father. For a moment he hesitated whether he should
not apply for leave in order to see Natásha before she was married, but then
came the maneuvers, and considerations about Sónya and about the confusion of
their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off. But in the spring of that year, he
received a letter from his mother, written without his father’s knowledge, and
that letter persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take
matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and they would
all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and trusted Mítenka so much,
and was so good-natured, that everybody took advantage of him and things were
going from bad to worse. “For God’s sake, I implore you, come at once if you do
not wish to make me and the whole family wretched,” wrote the countess.
This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a matter-of-fact
man which showed him what he ought to do.
The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any rate to go
home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his after-dinner nap
he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious gray stallion that had not
been ridden for a long time, and when he returned with the horse all in a lather,
he informed Lavrúshka (Denísov’s servant who had remained with him) and his
comrades who turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was
going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would go
away without having heard from the staff—and this interested him extremely—
whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the Order of St. Anne
for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think that he would go away without
having sold his three roans to the Polish Count Golukhovski, who was
bargaining for the horses Rostóv had betted he would sell for two thousand
rubles; incomprehensible as it seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in
honor of the Polish Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who
had given one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would take
place without him—he knew he must go away from this good, bright world to
somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he obtained
his leave. His hussar comrades—not only those of his own regiment, but the
whole brigade—gave Rostóv a dinner to which the subscription was fifteen
rubles a head, and at which there were two bands and two choirs of singers.
Rostóv danced the Trepák with Major Básov; the tipsy officers tossed,
embraced, and dropped Rostóv; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too,
and shouted “hurrah!” and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far
as the first post station.
During the first half of the journey—from Kremenchúg to Kiev—all Rostóv’s
thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with the squadron; but
when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget his three roans and
Dozhoyvéyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously how things would be
at Otrádnoe and what he would find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the
nearer he approached it—far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to
the law by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of
the distance. At the last post station before Otrádnoe he gave the driver a three-
ruble tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.
After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of unsatisfied
expectation—the feeling that “everything is just the same, so why did I
hurry?”—Nicholas began to settle down in his old home world. His father and
mother were much the same, only a little older. What was new in them was a
certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there used not to be, and
which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the bad state of their affairs.
Sónya was nearly twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and promised
nothing more than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness
and love from the time Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of
this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Pétya and Natásha surprised Nicholas
most. Pétya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and mischievous,
with a voice that was already breaking. As for Natásha, for a long while
Nicholas wondered and laughed whenever he looked at her.
“You’re not the same at all,” he said.
“How? Am I uglier?”
“On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!” he whispered to her.
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Natásha, joyfully.
She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit to
Otrádnoe and showed him his last letter.
“Well, are you glad?” Natásha asked. “I am so tranquil and happy now.”
“Very glad,” answered Nicholas. “He is an excellent fellow.... And are you
very much in love?”
“How shall I put it?” replied Natásha. “I was in love with Borís, with my
teacher, and with Denísov, but this is quite different. I feel at peace and settled. I
know that no better man than he exists, and I am calm and contented now. Not at
all as before.”
Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the marriage for a
year; but Natásha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving to him that it
could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against
the father’s will, and that she herself wished it so.
“You don’t at all understand,” she said.
Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at all like a
girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was even-tempered and
calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed Nicholas and even made him
regard Bolkónski’s courtship skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was
sealed, especially as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed
to him that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage.
“Why this delay? Why no betrothal?” he thought. Once, when he had touched
on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise and somewhat to his
satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too had doubts about this marriage.
“You see he writes,” said she, showing her son a letter of Prince Andrew’s,
with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a daughter’s future
married happiness, “he writes that he won’t come before December. What can be
keeping him? Illness, probably! His health is very delicate. Don’t tell Natásha.
And don’t attach importance to her being so bright: that’s because she’s living
through the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we
receive a letter from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!”
(She always ended with these words.) “He is an excellent man!”
CHAPTER II
After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull. He was
worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid business matters
for which his mother had called him home. To throw off this burden as quickly
as possible, on the third day after his arrival he went, angry and scowling and
without answering questions as to where he was going, to Mítenka’s lodge and
demanded an account of everything. But what an account of everything might be
Nicholas knew even less than the frightened and bewildered Mítenka. The
conversation and the examination of the accounts with Mítenka did not last long.
The village elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting in
the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young count’s voice roaring and
snapping and rising louder and louder, and then words of abuse, dreadful words,
ejaculated one after the other.
“Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I’ll hack the dog to pieces! I’m not my
father!... Robbing us!...” and so on.
Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red in the
face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mítenka out by the scruff of the neck and
applied his foot and knee to his behind with great agility at convenient moments
between the words, shouting, “Be off! Never let me see your face here again,
you villain!”
Mítenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the shrubbery.
(This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for culprits at Otrádnoe.
Mítenka himself, returning tipsy from the town, used to hide there, and many of
the residents at Otrádnoe, hiding from Mítenka, knew of its protective qualities.)
Mítenka’s wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and frightened faces out of
the door of a room where a bright samovar was boiling and where the steward’s
high bedstead stood with its patchwork quilt.
The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by with
resolute strides and went into the house.
The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened at the
lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would certainly improve,
but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect this excitement might have on
her son. She went several times to his door on tiptoe and listened, as he lighted
one pipe after another.
Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed smile,
said to him:
“But you know, my dear boy, it’s a pity you got excited! Mítenka has told me
all about it.”
“I knew,” thought Nicholas, “that I should never understand anything in this
crazy world.”
“You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they were
carried forward—and you did not look at the other page.”
“Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have done, I
have done; but, if you like, I won’t speak to him again.”
“No, my dear boy” (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he had
mismanaged his wife’s property and was to blame toward his children, but he did
not know how to remedy it). “No, I beg you to attend to the business. I am old.
I...”
“No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I understand it all
less than you do.”
“Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings forward from
page to page,” he thought. “I used to understand what a ‘corner’ and the stakes at
cards meant, but carrying forward to another page I don’t understand at all,” said
he to himself, and after that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the
countess called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from
Anna Mikháylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he thought of
doing with it.
“This,” answered Nicholas. “You say it rests with me. Well, I don’t like Anna
Mikháylovna and I don’t like Borís, but they were our friends and poor. Well
then, this!” and he tore up the note, and by so doing caused the old countess to
weep tears of joy. After that, young Rostóv took no further part in any business
affairs, but devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a
new pursuit—the chase—for which his father kept a large establishment.
CHAPTER III
The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts congealed an
earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened and its bright green
stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the
cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded
ravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still been green islands
amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and bright-red islands amid
the green winter rye. The hares had already half changed their summer coats, the
fox cubs were beginning to scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs.
It was the best time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
sportsman Rostóv had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were so
jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give them a three days’
rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go on a distant expedition,
starting from the oak grove where there was an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.
All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the air was sharp,
but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began to thaw. On the
fifteenth, when young Rostóv, in his dressing gown, looked out of the window,
he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it was as if the sky were
melting and sinking to the earth without any wind. The only motion in the air
was that of the dripping, microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs
in the garden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the freshly fallen
leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened like
poppy seed and at a short distance merged into the dull, moist veil of mist.
Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell of decaying
leaves and of dog. Mílka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent
black eyes, got up on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like a
hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and
mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from the garden
path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch with lifted tail,
began rubbing himself against his legs.
“O-hoy!” came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman’s call which unites
the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round the corner came Daniel the
head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray, wrinkled old man with hair cut
straight over his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and
that look of independence and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen.
He doffed his Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This
scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel, disdainful
of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all the same his serf
and huntsman.
“Daniel!” Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the weather, the
hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away by that irresistible
passion for sport which makes a man forget all his previous resolutions, as a
lover forgets in the presence of his mistress.
“What orders, your excellency?” said the huntsman in his deep bass, deep as a
proto-deacon’s and hoarse with hallooing—and two flashing black eyes gazed
from under his brows at his master, who was silent. “Can you resist it?” those
eyes seemed to be asking.
“It’s a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?” asked Nicholas, scratching
Mílka behind the ears.
Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
“I sent Uvárka at dawn to listen,” his bass boomed out after a minute’s pause.
“He says she’s moved them into the Otrádnoe enclosure. They were howling
there.” (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom they both knew, had moved
with her cubs to the Otrádnoe copse, a small place a mile and a half from the
house.)
“We ought to go, don’t you think so?” said Nicholas. “Come to me with
Uvárka.”
“As you please.”
“Then put off feeding them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Five minutes later Daniel and Uvárka were standing in Nicholas’ big study.
Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was like seeing a horse
or a bear on the floor among the furniture and surroundings of human life.
Daniel himself felt this, and as usual stood just inside the door, trying to speak
softly and not move, for fear of breaking something in the master’s apartment,
and he hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that ceiling,
out into the open under the sky once more.
Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion that the
hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting), Nicholas ordered the
horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was about to go Natásha came in with
rapid steps, not having done up her hair or finished dressing and with her old
nurse’s big shawl wrapped round her. Pétya ran in at the same time.
“You are going?” asked Natásha. “I knew you would! Sónya said you
wouldn’t go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you couldn’t help
going.”
“Yes, we are going,” replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as he intended to
hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natásha and Pétya. “We are going, but
only wolf hunting: it would be dull for you.”
“You know it is my greatest pleasure,” said Natásha. “It’s not fair; you are
going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said nothing to us about it.”
“‘No barrier bars a Russian’s path’—we’ll go!” shouted Pétya.
“But you can’t. Mamma said you mustn’t,” said Nicholas to Natásha.
“Yes, I’ll go. I shall certainly go,” said Natásha decisively. “Daniel, tell them
to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my dogs,” she added to the
huntsman.
It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but to have
anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. He cast down his
eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business, careful as he went not to
inflict any accidental injury on the young lady.
CHAPTER IV
The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting establishment
but had now handed it all completely over to his son’s care, being in very good
spirits on this fifteenth of September, prepared to go out with the others.
In an hour’s time the whole hunting party was at the porch. Nicholas, with a
stern and serious air which showed that now was no time for attending to trifles,
went past Natásha and Pétya who were trying to tell him something. He had a
look at all the details of the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead
to find the quarry, mounted his chestnut Donéts, and whistling to his own leash
of borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to the Otrádnoe
wood. The old count’s horse, a sorrel gelding called Viflyánka, was led by the
groom in attendance on him, while the count himself was to drive in a small trap
straight to a spot reserved for him.
They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and whippers-in.
Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and more than forty
borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash belonging to members of the
family, there were about a hundred and thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.
Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his
business, his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the fence they
all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk, along the road and field
leading to the Otrádnoe covert.
The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and then
splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky still seemed to
descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the air was still, warm, and
silent. Occasionally the whistle of a huntsman, the snort of a horse, the crack of a
whip, or the whine of a straggling hound could be heard.
When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders with dogs
appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostóvs. In front rode a fresh-looking,
handsome old man with a large gray mustache.
“Good morning, Uncle!” said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.
“That’s it. Come on!... I was sure of it,” began “Uncle.” (He was a distant
relative of the Rostóvs’, a man of small means, and their neighbor.) “I knew you
wouldn’t be able to resist it and it’s a good thing you’re going. That’s it! Come
on!” (This was “Uncle’s” favorite expression.) “Take the covert at once, for my
Gírchik says the Ilágins are at Kornikí with their hounds. That’s it. Come on!...
They’ll take the cubs from under your very nose.”
“That’s where I’m going. Shall we join up our packs?” asked Nicholas.
The hounds were joined into one pack, and “Uncle” and Nicholas rode on side
by side. Natásha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide her eager face and
shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed by Pétya who always kept
close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and by a groom appointed to look after her.
Pétya, who was laughing, whipped and pulled at his horse. Natásha sat easily
and confidently on her black Arábchik and reined him in without effort with a
firm hand.
“Uncle” looked round disapprovingly at Pétya and Natásha. He did not like to
combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.
“Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!” shouted Pétya.
“Good morning, good morning! But don’t go overriding the hounds,” said
“Uncle” sternly.
“Nicholas, what a fine dog Truníla is! He knew me,” said Natásha, referring to
her favorite hound.
“In the first place, Truníla is not a ‘dog,’ but a harrier,” thought Nicholas, and
looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel the distance that ought to
separate them at that moment. Natásha understood it.
“You mustn’t think we’ll be in anyone’s way, Uncle,” she said. “We’ll go to
our places and won’t budge.”
“A good thing too, little countess,” said “Uncle,” “only mind you don’t fall off
your horse,” he added, “because—that’s it, come on!—you’ve nothing to hold on
to.”
The oasis of the Otrádnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards off, the
huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostóv, having finally settled with “Uncle”
where they should set on the hounds, and having shown Natásha where she was
to stand—a spot where nothing could possibly run out—went round above the
ravine.
“Well, nephew, you’re going for a big wolf,” said “Uncle.” “Mind and don’t
let her slip!”
“That’s as may happen,” answered Rostóv. “Karáy, here!” he shouted,
answering “Uncle’s” remark by this call to his borzoi. Karáy was a shaggy old
dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having tackled a big wolf unaided. They all
took up their places.
The old count, knowing his son’s ardor in the hunt, hurried so as not to be late,
and the huntsmen had not yet reached their places when Count Ilyá Rostóv,
cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove up with his black horses over
the winter rye to the place reserved for him, where a wolf might come out.
Having straightened his coat and fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he
mounted his good, sleek, well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyánka, which was
turning gray, like himself. His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilyá
Rostóv, though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well,
and rode to the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged his reins,
settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was ready, looked about with a
smile.
Beside him was Simon Chekmár, his personal attendant, an old horseman now
somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmár held in leash three formidable
wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master and his horse. Two
wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred paces farther along the edge
of the wood stood Mítka, the count’s other groom, a daring horseman and keen
rider to hounds. Before the hunt, by old custom, the count had drunk a silver
cupful of mulled brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of
his favorite Bordeaux.
He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were rather
moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his saddle, wrapped up in
his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out for an outing.
The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmár, having got everything ready, kept
glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of terms for thirty
years, and understanding the mood he was in expected a pleasant chat. A third
person rode up circumspectly through the wood (it was plain that he had had a
lesson) and stopped behind the count. This person was a gray-bearded old man
in a woman’s cloak, with a tall peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who
went by a woman’s name, Nastásya Ivánovna.
“Well, Nastásya Ivánovna!” whispered the count, winking at him. “If you
scare away the beast, Daniel’ll give it you!”
“I know a thing or two myself!” said Nastásya Ivánovna.
“Hush!” whispered the count and turned to Simon. “Have you seen the young
countess?” he asked. “Where is she?”
“With young Count Peter, by the Zhárov rank grass,” answered Simon,
smiling. “Though she’s a lady, she’s very fond of hunting.”
“And you’re surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?” said the count. “She’s
as good as many a man!”
“Of course! It’s marvelous. So bold, so easy!”
“And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyádov upland, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so well that
Daniel and I are often quite astounded,” said Simon, well knowing what would
please his master.
“Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?”
“A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the
Zavárzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight when they
rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand rubles and the rider beyond
all price! Yes, one would have to search far to find another as smart.”
“To search far...” repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not said more.
“To search far,” he said, turning back the skirt of his coat to get at his snuffbox.
“The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael
Sidórych...” Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had distinctly caught the
music of the hunt with only two or three hounds giving tongue. He bent down
his head and listened, shaking a warning finger at his master. “They are on the
scent of the cubs...” he whispered, “straight to the Lyádov uplands.”
The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked into the
distance straight before him, down the narrow open space, holding the snuffbox
in his hand but not taking any. After the cry of the hounds came the deep tones
of the wolf call from Daniel’s hunting horn; the pack joined the first three
hounds and they could be heard in full cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that
indicates that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on the hounds,
but changed to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others rose Daniel’s voice, now
a deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice seemed to fill the whole wood and
carried far beyond out into the open field.
After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his attendant
convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into two packs: the sound of
the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue, began to die away in the distance, the
other pack rushed by the wood past the count, and it was with this that Daniel’s
voice was heard calling ulyulyu. The sounds of both packs mingled and broke
apart again, but both were becoming more distant.
Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi had
entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in his hand, opened it
and took a pinch. “Back!” cried Simon to a borzoi that was pushing forward out
of the wood. The count started and dropped the snuffbox. Nastásya Ivánovna
dismounted to pick it up. The count and Simon were looking at him.
Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly
approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were just in front
of them.
The count turned and saw on his right Mítka staring at him with eyes starting
out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to the other side.
“Look out!” he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had long fretted to
utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he galloped toward the count.
The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a wolf
which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet lope farther to the
left to the very place where they were standing. The angry borzois whined and
getting free of the leash rushed past the horses’ feet at the wolf.
The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs awkwardly, like a
man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly swaying from side to side, gave
a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the
wood. At the same instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another,
and then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole
pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf had
disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and Daniel’s chestnut
horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back sat Daniel, hunched forward,
capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging over his flushed, perspiring face.
“Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!...” he cried. When he caught sight of the count his eyes
flashed lightning.
“Blast you!” he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the count.
“You’ve let the wolf go!... What sportsmen!” and as if scorning to say more to
the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving flanks of his
sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count had aroused and flew off
after the hounds. The count, like a punished schoolboy, looked round, trying by a
smile to win Simon’s sympathy for his plight. But Simon was no longer there.
He was galloping round by the bushes while the field was coming up on both
sides, all trying to head the wolf, but it vanished into the wood before they could
do so.
CHAPTER V
Nicholas Rostóv meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the wolf. By the
way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of the dogs whose notes were
familiar to him, by the way the voices of the huntsmen approached, receded, and
rose, he realized what was happening at the copse. He knew that young and old
wolves were there, that the hounds had separated into two packs, that somewhere
a wolf was being chased, and that something had gone wrong. He expected the
wolf to come his way any moment. He made thousands of different conjectures
as to where and from what side the beast would come and how he would set
upon it. Hope alternated with despair. Several times he addressed a prayer to
God that the wolf should come his way. He prayed with that passionate and
shamefaced feeling with which men pray at moments of great excitement arising
from trivial causes. “What would it be to Thee to do this for me?” he said to
God. “I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask this of Thee, but for God’s
sake do let the old wolf come my way and let Karáy spring at it—in sight of
‘Uncle’ who is watching from over there—and seize it by the throat in a death
grip!” A thousand times during that half-hour Rostóv cast eager and restless
glances over the edge of the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the
aspen undergrowth and the gully with its water-worn side and “Uncle’s” cap just
visible above the bush on his right.
“No, I shan’t have such luck,” thought Rostóv, “yet what wouldn’t it be worth!
It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am always unlucky.” Memories
of Austerlitz and of Dólokhov flashed rapidly and clearly through his mind.
“Only once in my life to get an old wolf, I want only that!” thought he, straining
eyes and ears and looking to the left and then to the right and listening to the
slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.
Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him across
the deserted field. “No, it can’t be!” thought Rostóv, taking a deep breath, as a
man does at the coming of something long hoped for. The height of happiness
was reached—and so simply, without warning, or noise, or display, that Rostóv
could not believe his eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran
forward and jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path. She was an old
animal with a gray back and big reddish belly. She ran without hurry, evidently
feeling sure that no one saw her. Rostóv, holding his breath, looked round at the
borzois. They stood or lay not seeing the wolf or understanding the situation.
Old Karáy had turned his head and was angrily searching for fleas, baring his
yellow teeth and snapping at his hind legs.
“Ulyulyulyu!” whispered Rostóv, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped up,
jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karáy finished scratching
his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up with quivering tail from which
tufts of matted hair hung down.
“Shall I loose them or not?” Nicholas asked himself as the wolf approached
him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf’s whole physiognomy changed:
she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never seen before—human eyes
fixed upon her—and turning her head a little toward Rostóv, she paused.
“Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward...” the wolf seemed to say to
herself, and she moved forward without again looking round and with a quiet,
long, easy yet resolute lope.
“Ulyulyu!” cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own accord his
good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies to head off the wolf,
and the borzois passed it, running faster still. Nicholas did not hear his own cry
nor feel that he was galloping, nor see the borzois, nor the ground over which he
went: he saw only the wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same
direction along the hollow. The first to come into view was Mílka, with her black
markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the wolf. Nearer and nearer... now
she was ahead of it; but the wolf turned its head to face her, and instead of
putting on speed as she usually did Mílka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened
her forelegs.
“Ulyulyulyulyu!” shouted Nicholas.
The reddish Lyubím rushed forward from behind Mílka, sprang impetuously
at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but immediately jumped aside in
terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her teeth, and again rose and bounded
forward, followed at the distance of a couple of feet by all the borzois, who did
not get any closer to her.
“She’ll get away! No, it’s impossible!” thought Nicholas, still shouting with a
hoarse voice.
“Karáy, ulyulyu!...” he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi who was now
his only hope. Karáy, with all the strength age had left him, stretched himself to
the utmost and, watching the wolf, galloped heavily aside to intercept it. But the
quickness of the wolf’s lope and the borzoi’s slower pace made it plain that
Karáy had miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front of him the
wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach it. But, coming
toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping almost straight at the wolf.
There was still hope. A long, yellowish young borzoi, one Nicholas did not
know, from another leash, rushed impetuously at the wolf from in front and
almost knocked her over. But the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone
could have expected and, gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi,
which, with a piercing yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a
gash in its side.
“Karáy? Old fellow!...” wailed Nicholas.
Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf’s path, the old dog
with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within five paces of it. As if aware
of her danger, the wolf turned her eyes on Karáy, tucked her tail yet further
between her legs, and increased her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that
something happened to Karáy—the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they
rolled together down into a gully just in front of them.
That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully with the
dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and outstretched hind
leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears laid back (Karáy was pinning
her by the throat), was the happiest moment of his life. With his hand on his
saddlebow, he was ready to dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly
thrust her head up from among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on
the edge of the gully. She clicked her teeth (Karáy no longer had her by the
throat), leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and having
disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again, went forward. Karáy,
his hair bristling, and probably bruised or wounded, climbed with difficulty out
of the gully.
“Oh my God! Why?” Nicholas cried in despair.
“Uncle’s” huntsman was galloping from the other side across the wolf’s path
and his borzois once more stopped the animal’s advance. She was again hemmed
in.
Nicholas and his attendant, with “Uncle” and his huntsman, were all riding
round the wolf, crying “ulyulyu!” shouting and preparing to dismount each
moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward again every time she
shook herself and moved toward the wood where she would be safe.
Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the ulyulyuing, had
rushed out from the wood. He saw Karáy seize the wolf, and checked his horse,
supposing the affair to be over. But when he saw that the horsemen did not
dismount and that the wolf shook herself and ran for safety, Daniel set his
chestnut galloping, not at the wolf but straight toward the wood, just as Karáy
had run to cut the animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just
when she had been stopped a second time by “Uncle’s” borzois.
Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand and
thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as if it were a
flail.
Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut, breathing heavily,
panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body and saw Daniel lying on the
wolf’s back among the dogs, trying to seize her by the ears. It was evident to the
dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf herself that all was now over. The terrified
wolf pressed back her ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Daniel
rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, fell
on the wolf, seizing her by the ears. Nicholas was about to stab her, but Daniel
whispered, “Don’t! We’ll gag her!” and, changing his position, set his foot on the
wolf’s neck. A stick was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a
leash, as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Daniel rolled her over
once or twice from side to side.
With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a shying and
snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her, took her to the place
where they were all to meet. The hounds had killed two of the cubs and the
borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with their booty and their stories, and all
came to look at the wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down and
the bitten stick between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd of
dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked her bound
legs and looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count Rostóv also rode up
and touched the wolf.
“Oh, what a formidable one!” said he. “A formidable one, eh?” he asked
Daniel, who was standing near.
“Yes, your excellency,” answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.
The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with Daniel.
“Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!” said the count.
For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable smile.
CHAPTER VI
The old count went home, and Natásha and Pétya promised to return very
soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At midday they put the
hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees. Nicholas standing in a
fallow field could see all his whips.
Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood alone in a
hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been loosed before
Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltórn, giving tongue at intervals; other hounds
joined in, now pausing and now again giving tongue. A moment later he heard a
cry from the wooded ravine that a fox had been found, and the whole pack,
joining together, rushed along the ravine toward the ryefield and away from
Nicholas.
He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the ravine, he
even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself at any moment on
the ryefield opposite.
The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, and
Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going hard across
the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew close to the fox which
began to dodge between the field in sharper and sharper curves, trailing its
brush, when suddenly a strange white borzoi dashed in followed by a black one,
and everything was in confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure,
scarcely swaying their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the
group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a
stranger, in a green coat.
“What’s this?” thought Nicholas. “Where’s that huntsman from? He is not
‘Uncle’s’ man.”
The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without strapping it to
the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high saddles, stood near them and
there too the dogs were lying. The huntsmen waved their arms and did
something to the fox. Then from that spot came the sound of a horn, with the
signal agreed on in case of a fight.
“That’s Ilágin’s huntsman having a row with our Iván,” said Nicholas’ groom.
Nicholas sent the man to call Natásha and Pétya to him, and rode at a footpace
to the place where the whips were getting the hounds together. Several of the
field galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.
Nicholas dismounted, and with Natásha and Pétya, who had ridden up,
stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out of the
bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward his young
master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a distance he took off his
cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face
was angry. One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.
“What has happened?” asked Nicholas.
“A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray bitch
that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the fox! I gave him one with
the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste of this?...” said the
huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably imagining himself still speaking
to his foe.
Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Pétya to wait for
him and rode to the spot where the enemy’s, Ilágin’s, hunting party was.
The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there, surrounded by
inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.
The facts were that Ilágin, with whom the Rostóvs had a quarrel and were at
law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostóvs, and had now, as
if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the Rostóvs were hunting and let his
man snatch a fox their dogs had chased.
Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilágin, with his usual absence of
moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his arbitrariness and
violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He rode in angry agitation toward
him, firmly grasping his whip and fully prepared to take the most resolute and
desperate steps to punish his enemy.
Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman in a
beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black horse,
accompanied by two hunt servants.
Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilágin a stately and courteous
gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young count’s
acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilágin raised his beaver cap and
said he much regretted what had occurred and would have the man punished
who had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted by someone else’s borzois. He
hoped to become better acquainted with the count and invited him to draw his
covert.
Natásha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had followed
him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging friendly greetings, she
rode up to them. Ilágin lifted his beaver cap still higher to Natásha and said, with
a pleasant smile, that the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the
chase as well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much.
To expiate his huntsman’s offense, Ilágin pressed the Rostóvs to come to an
upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for himself and which, he
said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the hunt, now doubled, moved
on.
The way to Iligin’s upland was across the fields. The hunt servants fell into
line. The masters rode together. “Uncle,” Rostóv, and Ilágin kept stealthily
glancing at one another’s dogs, trying not to be observed by their companions
and searching uneasily for rivals to their own borzois.
Rostóv was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred, red-spotted
bitch on Ilágin’s leash, slender but with muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and
prominent black eyes. He had heard of the swiftness of Ilágin’s borzois, and in
that beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Mílka.
In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilágin about the year’s harvest,
Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.
“A fine little bitch, that!” said he in a careless tone. “Is she swift?”
“That one? Yes, she’s a good dog, gets what she’s after,” answered Ilágin
indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erzá, for which, a year before, he had given
a neighbor three families of house serfs. “So in your parts, too, the harvest is
nothing to boast of, Count?” he went on, continuing the conversation they had
begun. And considering it polite to return the young count’s compliment, Ilágin
looked at his borzois and picked out Mílka who attracted his attention by her
breadth. “That black-spotted one of yours is fine—well shaped!” said he.
“Yes, she’s fast enough,” replied Nicholas, and thought: “If only a full-grown
hare would cross the field now I’d show you what sort of borzoi she is,” and
turning to his groom, he said he would give a ruble to anyone who found a hare.
“I don’t understand,” continued Ilágin, “how some sportsmen can be so
jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I enjoy riding in
company such as this... what could be better?” (he again raised his cap to
Natásha) “but as for counting skins and what one takes, I don’t care about that.”
“Of course not!”
“Or being upset because someone else’s borzoi and not mine catches
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so, Count? For I
consider that...”
“A-tu!” came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in, who had
halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip aloft, and again
repeated his long-drawn cry, “A-tu!” (This call and the uplifted whip meant that
he saw a sitting hare.)
“Ah, he has found one, I think,” said Ilágin carelessly. “Yes, we must ride
up.... Shall we both course it?” answered Nicholas, seeing in Erzá and “Uncle’s”
red Rugáy two rivals he had never yet had a chance of pitting against his own
borzois. “And suppose they outdo my Mílka at once!” he thought as he rode with
“Uncle” and Ilágin toward the hare.
“A full-grown one?” asked Ilágin as he approached the whip who had sighted
the hare—and not without agitation he looked round and whistled to Erzá.
“And you, Michael Nikanórovich?” he said, addressing “Uncle.”
The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.
“How can I join in? Why, you’ve given a village for each of your borzois!
That’s it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours against one another,
you two, and I’ll look on!”
“Rugáy, hey, hey!” he shouted. “Rugáyushka!” he added, involuntarily by this
diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on this red borzoi.
Natásha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly men and her brother were
trying to conceal, and was herself excited by it.
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the
gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off on the
horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but not the gentlefolk, also
moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.
“How is it pointing?” asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces toward the whip
who had sighted the hare.
But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming next
morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash rushed downhill in
full cry after the hare, and from all sides the borzois that were not on leash
darted after the hounds and the hare. All the hunt, who had been moving slowly,
shouted, “Stop!” calling in the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of “A-
tu!” galloped across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilágin,
Nicholas, Natásha, and “Uncle” flew, reckless of where and how they went,
seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose sight even for an
instant of the chase. The hare they had started was a strong and swift one. When
he jumped up he did not run at once, but pricked his ears listening to the
shouting and trampling that resounded from all sides at once. He took a dozen
bounds, not very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having
chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and rushed off
headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of him was the autumn
sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois of the huntsman who had
sighted him, having been the nearest, were the first to see and pursue him, but
they had not gone far before Ilágin’s red-spotted Erzá passed them, got within a
length, flew at the hare with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking
she had seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and
bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erzá rushed the broad-haunched,
black-spotted Mílka and began rapidly gaining on the hare.
“Miláshka, dear!” rose Nicholas’ triumphant cry. It looked as if Mílka would
immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and flew past. The hare
had squatted. Again the beautiful Erzá reached him, but when close to the hare’s
scut paused as if measuring the distance, so as not to make a mistake this time
but seize his hind leg.
“Erzá, darling!” Ilágin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erzá did not hearken
to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have seized her prey, the hare
moved and darted along the balk between the winter rye and the stubble. Again
Erzá and Mílka were abreast, running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to
overtake the hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois
did not overtake him so quickly.
“Rugáy, Rugáyushka! That’s it, come on!” came a third voice just then, and
“Uncle’s” red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught up with the two
foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of the terrible strain, put on
speed close to the hare, knocked it off the balk onto the ryefield, again put on
speed still more viciously, sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one
could see was how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of
borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the
crowd of dogs. Only the delighted “Uncle” dismounted, and cut off a pad,
shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round with
restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without himself
knowing whom to or what about. “That’s it, come on! That’s a dog!... There, it
has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That’s
it, come on!” said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if he were
abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and had insulted him, and only
now had he at last succeeded in justifying himself. “There are your thousand-
ruble ones.... That’s it, come on!...”
“Rugáy, here’s a pad for you!” he said, throwing down the hare’s muddy pad.
“You’ve deserved it, that’s it, come on!”
“She’d tired herself out, she’d run it down three times by herself,” said
Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of whether he were heard
or not.
“But what is there in running across it like that?” said Ilágin’s groom.
“Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take it,” Ilágin
was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop and his excitement. At
the same moment Natásha, without drawing breath, screamed joyously,
ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set everyone’s ear tingling. By that shriek
she expressed what the others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so
strange that she must herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone
else would have been amazed at it at any other time. “Uncle” himself twisted up
the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse’s back as if by that gesture
he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not wishing to speak to
anyone, mounted his bay and rode off. The others all followed, dispirited and
shamefaced, and only much later were they able to regain their former
affectation of indifference. For a long time they continued to look at red Rugáy
who, his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash,
walked along just behind “Uncle’s” horse with the serene air of a conqueror.
“Well, I am like any other dog as long as it’s not a question of coursing. But
when it is, then look out!” his appearance seemed to Nicholas to be saying.
When, much later, “Uncle” rode up to Nicholas and began talking to him, he
felt flattered that, after what had happened, “Uncle” deigned to speak to him.
CHAPTER VII
Toward evening Ilágin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they were so
far from home that he accepted “Uncle’s” offer that the hunting party should
spend the night in his little village of Mikháylovna.
“And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That’s it, come on!”
said “Uncle.” “You see it’s damp weather, and you could rest, and the little
countess could be driven home in a trap.”
“Uncle’s” offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otrádnoe for a trap,
while Nicholas rode with Natásha and Pétya to “Uncle’s” house.
Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the front porch to
meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and young, as well as children,
popped out from the back entrance to have a look at the hunters who were
arriving. The presence of Natásha—a woman, a lady, and on horseback—raised
the curiosity of the serfs to such a degree that many of them came up to her,
stared her in the face, and unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as
though she were some prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or
understand what was said about her.
“Arínka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt dangles.... See,
she’s got a little hunting horn!”
“Goodness gracious! See her knife?...”
“Isn’t she a Tartar!”
“How is it you didn’t go head over heels?” asked the boldest of all, addressing
Natásha directly.
“Uncle” dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which stood in the
midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his retainers, shouted
authoritatively that the superfluous ones should take themselves off and that all
necessary preparations should be made to receive the guests and the visitors.
The serfs all dispersed. “Uncle” lifted Natásha off her horse and taking her
hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch. The house, with its bare,
unplastered log walls, was not overclean—it did not seem that those living in it
aimed at keeping it spotless—but neither was it noticeably neglected. In the
entry there was a smell of fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.
“Uncle” led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with a folding
table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a round birchwood table
and a sofa, and finally into his private room where there was a tattered sofa, a
worn carpet, and portraits of Suvórov, of the host’s father and mother, and of
himself in military uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs.
“Uncle” asked his visitors to sit down and make themselves at home, and then
went out of the room. Rugáy, his back still muddy, came into the room and lay
down on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth. Leading from the
study was a passage in which a partition with ragged curtains could be seen.
From behind this came women’s laughter and whispers. Natásha, Nicholas, and
Pétya took off their wraps and sat down on the sofa. Pétya, leaning on his elbow,
fell asleep at once. Natásha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces glowed, they
were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another (now that the hunt
was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no longer considered it necessary
to show his manly superiority over his sister), Natásha gave him a wink, and
neither refrained long from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before
they had a pretext ready to account for it.
After a while “Uncle” came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and small top
boots. And Natásha felt that this costume, the very one she had regarded with
surprise and amusement at Otrádnoe, was just the right thing and not at all worse
than a swallow-tail or frock coat. “Uncle” too was in high spirits and far from
being offended by the brother’s and sister’s laughter (it could never enter his
head that they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the
merriment.
“That’s right, young countess, that’s it, come on! I never saw anyone like
her!” said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem and, with a practiced
motion of three fingers, taking down another that had been cut short. “She’s
ridden all day like a man, and is as fresh as ever!”
Soon after “Uncle’s” reappearance the door was opened, evidently from the
sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking woman of about forty,
with a double chin and full red lips, entered carrying a large loaded tray. With
hospitable dignity and cordiality in her glance and in every motion, she looked at
the visitors and, with a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her
exceptional stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and
throw back her head, this woman (who was “Uncle’s” housekeeper) trod very
lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her plump white hands
deftly took from it the bottles and various hors d’oeuvres and dishes and
arranged them on the table. When she had finished, she stepped aside and
stopped at the door with a smile on her face. “Here I am. I am she! Now do you
understand ‘Uncle’?” her expression said to Rostóv. How could one help
understanding? Not only Nicholas, but even Natásha understood the meaning of
his puckered brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his
lips when Anísya Fëdorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb wine,
different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with buttermilk,
honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead, apples, nuts (raw and
roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards she brought a freshly roasted
chicken, ham, preserves made with honey, and preserves made with sugar.
All this was the fruit of Anísya Fëdorovna’s housekeeping, gathered and
prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a smack of Anísya Fëdorovna
herself: a savor of juiciness, cleanliness, whiteness, and pleasant smiles.
“Take this, little Lady-Countess!” she kept saying, as she offered Natásha first
one thing and then another.
Natásha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten such
buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets, or such a
chicken anywhere. Anísya Fëdorovna left the room.
After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostóv and “Uncle” talked of past and
future hunts, of Rugáy and Ilágin’s dogs, while Natásha sat upright on the sofa
and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried several times to wake Pétya that he
might eat something, but he only muttered incoherent words without waking up.
Natásha felt so lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only
feared the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause, such as often
occurs when receiving friends for the first time in one’s own house, “Uncle,”
answering a thought that was in his visitors’ minds, said:
“This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come. That’s it,
come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?”
“Uncle’s” face was very significant and even handsome as he said this.
Involuntarily Rostóv recalled all the good he had heard about him from his
father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province “Uncle” had the
reputation of being the most honorable and disinterested of cranks. They called
him in to decide family disputes, chose him as executor, confided secrets to him,
elected him to be a justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused
public appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on his bay
gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown garden in summer.
“Why don’t you enter the service, Uncle?”
“I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That’s it, come on! I can’t make
head or tail of it. That’s for you—I haven’t brains enough. Now, hunting is
another matter—that’s it, come on! Open the door, there!” he shouted. “Why
have you shut it?”
The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen’s room, as they called
the room for the hunt servants.
There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the door into
the huntsmen’s room, from which came the clear sounds of a balaláyka on which
someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was playing. Natásha had been
listening to those strains for some time and now went out into the passage to
hear better.
“That’s Mítka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balaláyka. I’m fond of
it,” said “Uncle.”
It was the custom for Mítka to play the balaláyka in the huntsmen’s room
when “Uncle” returned from the chase. “Uncle” was fond of such music.
“How good! Really very good!” said Nicholas with some unintentional
superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the sounds pleased him very
much.
“Very good?” said Natásha reproachfully, noticing her brother’s tone. “Not
‘very good’ it’s simply delicious!”
Just as “Uncle’s” pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had seemed
to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that moment, seemed to her the
acme of musical delight.
“More, please, more!” cried Natásha at the door as soon as the balaláyka
ceased. Mítka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the balaláyka to
the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. “Uncle” sat listening, slightly
smiling, with his head on one side. The air was repeated a hundred times. The
balaláyka was retuned several times and the same notes were thrummed again,
but the listeners did not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again.
Anísya Fëdorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.
“You like listening?” she said to Natásha, with a smile extremely like
“Uncle’s.” “That’s a good player of ours,” she added.
“He doesn’t play that part right!” said “Uncle” suddenly, with an energetic
gesture. “Here he ought to burst out—that’s it, come on!—ought to burst out.”
“Do you play then?” asked Natásha.
“Uncle” did not answer, but smiled.
“Anísya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I haven’t touched
it for a long time. That’s it—come on! I’ve given it up.”
Anísya Fëdorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her errand and
brought back the guitar.
Without looking at anyone, “Uncle” blew the dust off it and, tapping the case
with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in his armchair. He
took the guitar a little above the fingerboard, arching his left elbow with a
somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a wink at Anísya Fëdorovna, struck a
single chord, pure and sonorous, and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently
began playing in very slow time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a
maiden down the street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began
to thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natásha, arousing in them the same kind of
sober mirth as radiated from Anísya Fëdorovna’s whole being. Anísya
Fëdorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went laughing out of
the room. “Uncle” continued to play correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness,
looking with a changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anísya
Fëdorovna had just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side
of his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker and the
time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers over the strings,
something seemed to snap.
“Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!” shouted Natásha as soon as he had
finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. “Nicholas, Nicholas!” she
said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: “What is it moves me so?”
Nicholas too was greatly pleased by “Uncle’s” playing, and “Uncle” played
the piece over again. Anísya Fëdorovna’s smiling face reappeared in the
doorway and behind hers other faces...
Fetching water clear and sweet,
Stop, dear maiden, I entreat—
played “Uncle” once more, running his fingers skillfully over the strings, and
then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.
“Go on, Uncle dear,” Natásha wailed in an imploring tone as if her life
depended on it.
“Uncle” rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of them smiled
seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow struck a naïve and precise
attitude preparatory to a folk dance.
“Now then, niece!” he exclaimed, waving to Natásha the hand that had just
struck a chord.
Natásha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to face “Uncle,”
and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with her shoulders and struck
an attitude.
Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an émigrée
French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that spirit and
obtained that manner which the pas de châle * would, one would have supposed,
long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the movements were those inimitable
and unteachable Russian ones that “Uncle” had expected of her. As soon as she
had struck her pose, and smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment,
the fear that had at first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do the
right thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her.
* The French shawl dance.
She did the right thing with such precision, such complete precision, that
Anísya Fëdorovna, who had at once handed her the handkerchief she needed for
the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched this slim,
graceful countess, reared in silks and velvets and so different from herself, who
yet was able to understand all that was in Anísya and in Anísya’s father and
mother and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.
“Well, little countess; that’s it—come on!” cried “Uncle,” with a joyous laugh,
having finished the dance. “Well done, niece! Now a fine young fellow must be
found as husband for you. That’s it—come on!”
“He’s chosen already,” said Nicholas smiling.
“Oh?” said “Uncle” in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natásha, who nodded
her head with a happy smile.
“And such a one!” she said. But as soon as she had said it a new train of
thoughts and feelings arose in her. “What did Nicholas’ smile mean when he said
‘chosen already’? Is he glad of it or not? It is as if he thought my Bolkónski
would not approve of or understand our gaiety. But he would understand it all.
Where is he now?” she thought, and her face suddenly became serious. But this
lasted only a second. “Don’t dare to think about it,” she said to herself, and sat
down again smilingly beside “Uncle,” begging him to play something more.
“Uncle” played another song and a valse; then after a pause he cleared his
throat and sang his favorite hunting song:
As ‘twas growing dark last night
Fell the snow so soft and light...
“Uncle” sang as peasants sing, with full and naïve conviction that the whole
meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune comes of itself, and that
apart from the words there is no tune, which exists only to give measure to the
words. As a result of this the unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was
extraordinarily good. Natásha was in ecstasies over “Uncle’s” singing. She
resolved to give up learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked
“Uncle” for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song.
After nine o’clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been sent to
look for them, arrived to fetch Natásha and Pétya. The count and countess did
not know where they were and were very anxious, said one of the men.
Pétya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two traps. Natásha
and Nicholas got into the other. “Uncle” wrapped Natásha up warmly and took
leave of her with quite a new tenderness. He accompanied them on foot as far as
the bridge that could not be crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and
he sent huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns.
“Good-by, dear niece,” his voice called out of the darkness—not the voice
Natásha had known previously, but the one that had sung As ‘twas growing dark
last night.
In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a cheerful
smell of smoke.
“What a darling Uncle is!” said Natásha, when they had come out onto the
highroad.
“Yes,” returned Nicholas. “You’re not cold?”
“No. I’m quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!” answered Natásha,
almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long while. The night
was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but only heard them
splashing through the unseen mud.
What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly caught and
assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did they all find place in
her? But she was very happy. As they were nearing home she suddenly struck up
the air of As ‘twas growing dark last night—the tune of which she had all the
way been trying to get and had at last caught.
“Got it?” said Nicholas.
“What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?” inquired Natásha.
They were fond of asking one another that question.
“I?” said Nicholas, trying to remember. “Well, you see, first I thought that
Rugáy, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were a man he would
always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then for his manner. What a
good fellow Uncle is! Don’t you think so?... Well, and you?”
“I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving along and
imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows where we are really
going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive and suddenly find that we are not
in Otrádnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I thought... No, nothing else.”
“I know, I expect you thought of him,” said Nicholas, smiling as Natásha
knew by the sound of his voice.
“No,” said Natásha, though she had in reality been thinking about Prince
Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would have liked “Uncle.”
“And then I was saying to myself all the way, ‘How well Anísya carried herself,
how well!’” And Nicholas heard her spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. “And
do you know,” she suddenly said, “I know that I shall never again be as happy
and tranquil as I am now.”
“Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!” exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought: “How
charming this Natásha of mine is! I have no other friend like her and never shall
have. Why should she marry? We might always drive about together!”
“What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!” thought Natásha.
“Ah, there are still lights in the drawing room!” she said, pointing to the
windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety darkness of
the night.
CHAPTER VIII
Count Ilyá Rostóv had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility
because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs did not
improve. Natásha and Nicholas often noticed their parents conferring together
anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of selling the fine ancestral
Rostóv house and estate near Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely
as when the count had been Marshal, and life at Otrádnoe was quieter than in
former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of people and
more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were all their own people
who had settled down in the house almost as members of the family, or persons
who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count’s house. Such were Dimmler
the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belóva, an
old maiden lady, an inmate of the house, and many others such as Pétya’s tutors,
the girls’ former governess, and other people who simply found it preferable and
more advantageous to live in the count’s house than at home. They had not as
many visitors as before, but the old habits of life without which the count and
countess could not conceive of existence remained unchanged. There was still
the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty
horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive presents and dinner
parties to the whole district on name days; there were still the count’s games of
whist and boston, at which—spreading out his cards so that everybody could see
them—he let himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his
neighbors, who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostóv
as a most profitable source of income.
The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe that he
was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and feeling too
feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and patiently to disentangle
them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt that her children were being
ruined, that it was not the count’s fault for he could not help being what he was
—that (though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of
his own and his children’s ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the
position. From her feminine point of view she could see only one solution,
namely, for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope
and that if Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she would have to
abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with Julie
Karágina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a girl the Rostóvs had
known from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy heiress through the
death of the last of her brothers.
The countess had written direct to Julie’s mother in Moscow suggesting a
marriage between their children and had received a favorable answer from her.
Karágina had replied that for her part she was agreeable, and everything depend
on her daughter’s inclination. She invited Nicholas to come to Moscow.
Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son that now both
her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him married. She said she
could lie down in her grave peacefully if that were accomplished. Then she told
him that she knew of a splendid girl and tried to discover what he thought about
marriage.
At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to Moscow
during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his mother’s
remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations induced her to
speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of getting their affairs
disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie Karágina.
“But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you expect
me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of money?” he asked his
mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question and only wishing to show his
noble-mindedness.
“No, you have not understood me,” said his mother, not knowing how to
justify herself. “You have not understood me, Nikólenka. It is your happiness I
wish for,” she added, feeling that she was telling an untruth and was becoming
entangled. She began to cry.
“Mamma, don’t cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I will give
my life, anything, to put you at ease,” said Nicholas. “I would sacrifice anything
for you—even my feelings.”
But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did not want a
sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a sacrifice for him.
“No, you have not understood me, don’t let us talk about it,” she replied,
wiping away her tears.
“Maybe I do love a poor girl,” said Nicholas to himself. “Am I to sacrifice my
feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could speak so to me.
Because Sónya is poor I must not love her,” he thought, “must not respond to her
faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly be happier with her than with some
doll-like Julie. I can always sacrifice my feelings for my family’s welfare,” he
said to himself, “but I can’t coerce my feelings. If I love Sónya, that feeling is
for me stronger and higher than all else.”
Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and sometimes with
exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and the
portionless Sónya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could not refrain from
grumbling at and worrying Sónya, often pulling her up without reason,
addressing her stiffly as “my dear,” and using the formal “you” instead of the
intimate “thou” in speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed
with Sónya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so
devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and
unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for finding fault
with her.
Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter had come
from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would have been on
his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly reopened in the
warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return till the beginning of the new
year. Natásha was still as much in love with her betrothed, found the same
comfort in that love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures
of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their separation she began
to have fits of depression which she could not master. She felt sorry for herself:
sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of no use to anyone—while she
felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.
Things were not cheerful in the Rostóvs’ home.
CHAPTER IX
Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and the new
dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities, though the calm frost
of twenty degrees Réaumur, the dazzling sunshine by day, and the starlight of the
winter nights seemed to call for some special celebration of the season.
On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the inmates of
the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest time of the day.
Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that morning, was asleep on the
sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting in his study. Sónya sat in the
drawing room at the round table, copying a design for embroidery. The countess
was playing patience. Nastásya Ivánovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the
window with two old ladies. Natásha came into the room, went up to Sónya,
glanced at what she was doing, and then went up to her mother and stood
without speaking.
“Why are you wandering about like an outcast?” asked her mother. “What do
you want?”
“Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!” said Natásha, with
glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.
The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.
“Don’t look at me, Mamma! Don’t look; I shall cry directly.”
“Sit down with me a little,” said the countess.
“Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?”
Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned quickly to hide
them and left the room.
She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and then went
into the maids’ room. There an old maidservant was grumbling at a young girl
who stood panting, having just run in through the cold from the serfs’ quarters.
“Stop playing—there’s a time for everything,” said the old woman.
“Let her alone, Kondrátevna,” said Natásha. “Go, Mavrúshka, go.”
Having released Mavrúshka, Natásha crossed the dancing hall and went to the
vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing cards. They
broke off and rose as she entered.
“What can I do with them?” thought Natásha.
“Oh, Nikíta, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the yard and fetch
a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some oats.”
“Just a few oats?” said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
“Go, go quickly,” the old man urged him.
“And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk.”
On her way past the butler’s pantry she told them to set a samovar, though it
was not at all the time for tea.
Fóka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house. Natásha liked
to test her power over him. He distrusted the order and asked whether the
samovar was really wanted.
“Oh dear, what a young lady!” said Fóka, pretending to frown at Natásha.
No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as
Natásha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send them on
some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of them would get angry or
sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one’s orders so readily as they did hers.
“What can I do, where can I go?” thought she, as she went slowly along the
passage.
“Nastásya Ivánovna, what sort of children shall I have?” she asked the
buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman’s jacket.
“Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers,” answered the buffoon.
“O Lord, O Lord, it’s always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am I to
do with myself?” And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly upstairs to see
Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.
Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which were plates
of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were discussing whether it
was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natásha sat down, listened to their
talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and then got up again.
“The island of Madagascar,” she said, “Ma-da-gas-car,” she repeated,
articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame Schoss who
asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.
Her brother Pétya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him he was
preparing fireworks to let off that night.
“Pétya! Pétya!” she called to him. “Carry me downstairs.”
Pétya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her arms
round his neck, and he pranced along with her.
“No, don’t... the island of Madagascar!” she said, and jumping off his back
she went downstairs.
Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made sure that
everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull, Natásha betook
herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down in a dark corner behind a
bookcase, and began to run her fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a
passage she recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince
Andrew. What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other
listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences arose from
those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of
light escaping from the pantry door and listened to herself and pondered. She
was in a mood for brooding on the past.
Sónya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natásha glanced at her
and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she remembered the
light falling through that crack once before and Sónya passing with a glass in her
hand. “Yes it was exactly the same,” thought Natásha.
“Sónya, what is this?” she cried, twanging a thick string.
“Oh, you are there!” said Sónya with a start, and came near and listened. “I
don’t know. A storm?” she ventured timidly, afraid of being wrong.
“There! That’s just how she started and just how she came up smiling timidly
when all this happened before,” thought Natásha, “and in just the same way I
thought there was something lacking in her.”
“No, it’s the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen!” and Natásha sang the air
of the chorus so that Sónya should catch it. “Where were you going?” she asked.
“To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design.”
“You always find something to do, but I can’t,” said Natásha. “And where’s
Nicholas?”
“Asleep, I think.”
“Sónya, go and wake him,” said Natásha. “Tell him I want him to come and
sing.”
She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened before
could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting not having done
so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was with him and he was
looking at her with a lover’s eyes.
“Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be! And,
worst of all, I am growing old—that’s the thing! There won’t then be in me what
there is now. But perhaps he’ll come today, will come immediately. Perhaps he
has come and is sitting in the drawing room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I
have forgotten it.” She rose, put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.
All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were already at the tea
table. The servants stood round the table—but Prince Andrew was not there and
life was going on as before.
“Ah, here she is!” said the old count, when he saw Natásha enter. “Well, sit
down by me.” But Natásha stayed by her mother and glanced round as if looking
for something.
“Mamma!” she muttered, “give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,
quickly!” and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.
She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the elders
and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. “My God, my God! The same
faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the same way!”
thought Natásha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion rising up in her for the
whole household, because they were always the same.
After tea, Nicholas, Sónya, and Natásha went to the sitting room, to their
favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.
CHAPTER X
“Does it ever happen to you,” said Natásha to her brother, when they settled
down in the sitting room, “does it ever happen to you to feel as if there were
nothing more to come—nothing; that everything good is past? And to feel not
exactly dull, but sad?”
“I should think so!” he replied. “I have felt like that when everything was all
right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come into my mind that I was
already tired of it all, and that we must all die. Once in the regiment I had not
gone to some merrymaking where there was music... and suddenly I felt so
depressed...”
“Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!” Natásha interrupted him. “When I was
quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I was punished
once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing in the
schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for everyone, for myself,
and for everyone. And I was innocent—that was the chief thing,” said Natásha.
“Do you remember?”
“I remember,” answered Nicholas. “I remember that I came to you afterwards
and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt ashamed to. We were terribly
absurd. I had a funny doll then and wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?”
“And do you remember,” Natásha asked with a pensive smile, “how once,
long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into the study—that
was in the old house—and it was dark—we went in and suddenly there stood...”
“A Negro,” chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. “Of course I
remember. Even now I don’t know whether there really was a Negro, or if we
only dreamed it or were told about him.”
“He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and looked at
us....”
“Sónya, do you remember?” asked Nicholas.
“Yes, yes, I do remember something too,” Sónya answered timidly.
“You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro,” said Natásha,
“and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you remember!”
“Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them.”
“How strange it is! It’s as if it were a dream! I like that.”
“And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom, and
suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was that real or
not? Do you remember what fun it was?”
“Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun in the
porch?”
So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad
memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones—those impressions of one’s most
distant past in which dreams and realities blend—and they laughed with quiet
enjoyment.
Sónya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they shared the
same reminiscences.
Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she recalled
did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced. She simply enjoyed
their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.
She only really took part when they recalled Sónya’s first arrival. She told
them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because he had on a corded jacket and
her nurse had told her that she, too, would be sewn up with cords.
“And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a cabbage,”
said Natásha, “and I remember that I dared not disbelieve it then, but knew that
it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable.”
While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other door of the
sitting room.
“They have brought the cock, Miss,” she said in a whisper.
“It isn’t wanted, Pólya. Tell them to take it away,” replied Natásha.
In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and went up
to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its cloth covering, and the
harp gave out a jarring sound.
“Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field,” came the old
countess’ voice from the drawing room.
Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natásha, Nicholas, and Sónya,
remarked: “How quiet you young people are!”
“Yes, we’re philosophizing,” said Natásha, glancing round for a moment and
then continuing the conversation. They were now discussing dreams.
Dimmler began to play; Natásha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the table, took
up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself quietly in her former
place. It was dark in the room especially where they were sitting on the sofa, but
through the big windows the silvery light of the full moon fell on the floor.
Dimmler had finished the piece but still sat softly running his fingers over the
strings, evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.
“Do you know,” said Natásha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and
Sónya, “that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at last begins to
remember what happened before one was in the world....”
“That is metempsychosis,” said Sónya, who had always learned well, and
remembered everything. “The Egyptians believed that our souls have lived in
animals, and will go back into animals again.”
“No, I don’t believe we ever were in animals,” said Natásha, still in a whisper
though the music had ceased. “But I am certain that we were angels somewhere
there, and have been here, and that is why we remember....”
“May I join you?” said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat down
by them.
“If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?” said Nicholas. “No, that
can’t be!”
“Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was before?”
Natásha rejoined with conviction. “The soul is immortal—well then, if I shall
always live I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity.”
“Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity,” remarked Dimmler, who had
joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now spoke as
quietly and seriously as they.
“Why is it hard to imagine eternity?” said Natásha. “It is now today, and it
will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and the day before....”
“Natásha! Now it’s your turn. Sing me something,” they heard the countess
say. “Why are you sitting there like conspirators?”
“Mamma, I don’t at all want to,” replied Natásha, but all the same she rose.
None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off their
conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but Natásha got up and
Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as usual in the middle of the hall
and choosing the place where the resonance was best, Natásha began to sing her
mother’s favorite song.
She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had sung, and
long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The count, from his study
where he was talking to Mítenka, heard her and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to
run out to play, blundered in his talk while giving orders to the steward, and at
last stopped, while Mítenka stood in front of him also listening and smiling.
Nicholas did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath in time with her.
Sónya, as she listened, thought of the immense difference there was between
herself and her friend, and how impossible it was for her to be anything like as
bewitching as her cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and
with tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of Natásha
and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural and dreadful in
this impending marriage of Natásha and Prince Andrew.
Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with closed
eyes.
“Ah, Countess,” he said at last, “that’s a European talent, she has nothing to
learn—what softness, tenderness, and strength....”
“Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!” said the countess, not
realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her that Natásha
had too much of something, and that because of this she would not be happy.
Before Natásha had finished singing, fourteen-year-old Pétya rushed in
delightedly, to say that some mummers had arrived.
Natásha stopped abruptly.
“Idiot!” she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair, threw herself on
it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop for a long time.
“It’s nothing, Mamma, really it’s nothing; only Pétya startled me,” she said,
trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs still choked her.
The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
innkeepers, and ladies—frightening and funny—bringing in with them the cold
from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first timidly, into the anteroom,
then hiding behind one another they pushed into the ballroom where, shyly at
first and then more and more merrily and heartily, they started singing, dancing,
and playing Christmas games. The countess, when she had identified them and
laughed at their costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the
ballroom, smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had
disappeared.
Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the ballroom
an old lady in a hooped skirt—this was Nicholas. A Turkish girl was Pétya. A
clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natásha, and a Circassian was Sónya with
burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.
After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from those who
were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided that their costumes
were so good that they ought to be shown elsewhere.
Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to take them
all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them about a dozen of the serf
mummers and drive to “Uncle’s.”
“No, why disturb the old fellow?” said the countess. “Besides, you wouldn’t
have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the Melyukóvs’.”
Melyukóva was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
governesses, lived three miles from the Rostóvs.
“That’s right, my dear,” chimed in the old count, thoroughly aroused. “I’ll
dress up at once and go with them. I’ll make Pashette open her eyes.”
But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad leg all these
last days. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if Louisa Ivánovna
(Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies might go to the
Melyukóvs’, Sónya, generally so timid and shy, more urgently than anyone
begging Louisa Ivánovna not to refuse.
Sónya’s costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows were
extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very handsome, and she
was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with her. Some inner voice told her
that now or never her fate would be decided, and in her male attire she seemed
quite a different person. Louisa Ivánovna consented to go, and in half an hour
four troyka sleighs with large and small bells, their runners squeaking and
whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to the porch.
Natásha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing from
one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax when they all came out into
the frost and got into the sleighs, talking, calling to one another, laughing, and
shouting.
Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was the old
count’s with a trotter from the Orlóv stud as shaft horse, the fourth was Nicholas’
own with a short shaggy black shaft horse. Nicholas, in his old lady’s dress over
which he had belted his hussar overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins
in hand.
It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the metal
harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round in alarm at the
noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.
Natásha, Sónya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas’ sleigh;
Dimmler, his wife, and Pétya, into the old count’s, and the rest of the mummers
seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
“You go ahead, Zakhár!” shouted Nicholas to his father’s coachman, wishing
for a chance to race past him.
The old count’s troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its deep-toned bell
clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts of the middle horse, sank in
the snow, which was dry and glittered like sugar, and threw it up.
Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the others moved
noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove at a steady trot along the
narrow road. While they drove past the garden the shadows of the bare trees
often fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they
were past the fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread
out before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows.
Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the snow of the road, and
each of the other sleighs jolted in the same way, and rudely breaking the frost-
bound stillness, the troykas began to speed along the road, one after the other.
“A hare’s track, a lot of tracks!” rang out Natásha’s voice through the frost-
bound air.
“How light it is, Nicholas!” came Sónya’s voice.
Nicholas glanced round at Sónya, and bent down to see her face closer. Quite
a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches peeped up at him from her
sable furs—so close and yet so distant—in the moonlight.
“That used to be Sónya,” thought he, and looked at her closer and smiled.
“What is it, Nicholas?”
“Nothing,” said he and turned again to the horses.
When they came out onto the beaten highroad—polished by sleigh runners
and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were visible in the
moonlight—the horses began to tug at the reins of their own accord and
increased their pace. The near side horse, arching his head and breaking into a
short canter, tugged at his traces. The shaft horse swayed from side to side,
moving his ears as if asking: “Isn’t it time to begin now?” In front, already far
ahead the deep bell of the sleigh ringing farther and farther off, the black horses
driven by Zakhár could be clearly seen against the white snow. From that sleigh
one could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices of the mummers.
“Gee up, my darlings!” shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one side and
flourishing the whip.
It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given by the side
horses who pulled harder—ever increasing their gallop—that one noticed how
fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back. With screams, squeals, and
waving of whips that caused even the shaft horses to gallop—the other sleighs
followed. The shaft horse swung steadily beneath the bow over its head, with no
thought of slackening pace and ready to put on speed when required.
Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and coming out
upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.
“Where are we?” thought he. “It’s the Kosóy meadow, I suppose. But no—this
is something new I’ve never seen before. This isn’t the Kosóy meadow nor the
Dëmkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is something new and
enchanted. Well, whatever it may be...” And shouting to his horses, he began to
pass the first sleigh.
Zakhár held back his horses and turned his face, which was already covered
with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.
Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhár, stretching out his arms, clucked
his tongue and let his horses go.
“Now, look out, master!” he cried.
Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the feet of the
galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead. Zakhár, while still keeping
his arms extended, raised one hand with the reins.
“No you won’t, master!” he shouted.
Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhár. The horses
showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh—beside them
sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused glimpses of swiftly
moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they were passing. The whistling
sound of the runners on the snow and the voices of girls shrieking were heard
from different sides.
Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were still
surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled with stars.
“Zakhár is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the left?” thought
Nicholas. “Are we getting to the Melyukóvs’? Is this Melyukóvka? Heaven only
knows where we are going, and heaven knows what is happening to us—but it is
very strange and pleasant whatever it is.” And he looked round in the sleigh.
“Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!” said one of the strange,
pretty, unfamiliar people—the one with fine eyebrows and mustache.
“I think this used to be Natásha,” thought Nicholas, “and that was Madame
Schoss, but perhaps it’s not, and this Circassian with the mustache I don’t know,
but I love her.”
“Aren’t you cold?” he asked.
They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh behind
shouted something—probably something funny—but they could not make out
what he said.
“Yes, yes!” some voices answered, laughing.
“But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a glitter of
diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver roofs of fairy buildings and
the shrill yells of some animals. And if this is really Melyukóvka, it is still
stranger that we drove heaven knows where and have come to Melyukóvka,”
thought Nicholas.
It really was Melyukóvka, and maids and footmen with merry faces came
running, out to the porch carrying candles.
“Who is it?” asked someone in the porch.
“The mummers from the count’s. I know by the horses,” replied some voices.
CHAPTER XI
Pelagéya Danílovna Melyukóva, a broadly built, energetic woman wearing
spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress, surrounded by her daughters
whom she was trying to keep from feeling dull. They were quietly dropping
melted wax into snow and looking at the shadows the wax figures would throw
on the wall, when they heard the steps and voices of new arrivals in the
vestibule.
Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their throats and
wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule, came into the ballroom
where candles were hurriedly lighted. The clown—Dimmler—and the lady—
Nicholas—started a dance. Surrounded by the screaming children the mummers,
covering their faces and disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and
arranged themselves about the room.
“Dear me! there’s no recognizing them! And Natásha! See whom she looks
like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler—isn’t he good! I
didn’t know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there’s a Circassian. Really,
how becoming it is to dear Sónya. And who is that? Well, you have cheered us
up! Nikíta and Vanya—clear away the tables! And we were sitting so quietly.
Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar! Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can’t look
at him...” different voices were saying.
Natásha, the young Melyukóvs’ favorite, disappeared with them into the back
rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments were called
for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from behind the door.
Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukóvs joined the mummers.
Pelagéya Danílovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the visitors
and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs, went about among
the mummers without removing her spectacles, peering into their faces with a
suppressed smile and failing to recognize any of them. It was not merely
Dimmler and the Rostóvs she failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her
own daughters, or her late husband’s, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they
had put on.
“And who is this?” she asked her governess, peering into the face of her own
daughter dressed up as a Kazán-Tartar. “I suppose it is one of the Rostóvs! Well,
Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?” she asked Natásha. “Here,
hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!” she ordered the butler who was handing
things round. “That’s not forbidden by his law.”
Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by the
dancers, who—having decided once for all that being disguised, no one would
recognize them—were not at all shy, Pelagéya Danílovna hid her face in her
handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with irrepressible, kindly, elderly
laughter.
“My little Sásha! Look at Sásha!” she said.
After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelagéya Danílovna made
the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a string, and a silver ruble
were fetched and they all played games together.
In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The corked
eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring, flushed, and merry
faces. Pelagéya Danílovna began to recognize the mummers, admired their
cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly how they suited the young ladies,
and she thanked them all for having entertained her so well. The visitors were
invited to supper in the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to
them in the ballroom.
“Now to tell one’s fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!” said an old
maid who lived with the Melyukóvs, during supper.
“Why?” said the eldest Melyukóv girl.
“You wouldn’t go, it takes courage....”
“I’ll go,” said Sónya.
“Tell what happened to the young lady!” said the second Melyukóv girl.
“Well,” began the old maid, “a young lady once went out, took a cock, laid the
table for two, all properly, and sat down. After sitting a while, she suddenly
hears someone coming... a sleigh drives up with harness bells; she hears him
coming! He comes in, just in the shape of a man, like an officer—comes in and
sits down to table with her.”
“Ah! ah!” screamed Natásha, rolling her eyes with horror.
“Yes? And how... did he speak?”
“Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began persuading her; and
she should have kept him talking till cockcrow, but she got frightened, just got
frightened and hid her face in her hands. Then he caught her up. It was lucky the
maids ran in just then....”
“Now, why frighten them?” said Pelagéya Danílovna.
“Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself...” said her daughter.
“And how does one do it in a barn?” inquired Sónya.
“Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on what you
hear; hammering and knocking—that’s bad; but a sound of shifting grain is good
and one sometimes hears that, too.”
“Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn.”
Pelagéya Danílovna smiled.
“Oh, I’ve forgotten...” she replied. “But none of you would go?”
“Yes, I will; Pelagéya Danílovna, let me! I’ll go,” said Sónya.
“Well, why not, if you’re not afraid?”
“Louisa Ivánovna, may I?” asked Sónya.
Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game or
talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sónya’s side, and gazed at her with quite
new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today, thanks to that burnt-cork
mustache, that he had fully learned to know her. And really, that evening, Sónya
was brighter, more animated, and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen her
before.
“So that’s what she is like; what a fool I have been!” he thought gazing at her
sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous smile dimpled her
cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” said Sónya. “May I go at once?” She got up.
They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and listen, and
they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her head and shoulders and
glanced at Nicholas.
“What a darling that girl is!” thought he. “And what have I been thinking of
till now?”
Sónya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went hastily to the
front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of people really had made the
house stuffy.
Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but even
brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow sparkled with so
many stars that one did not wish to look up at the sky and the real stars were
unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, while the earth was gay.
“I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?” thought Nicholas, and
running out from the porch he went round the corner of the house and along the
path that led to the back porch. He knew Sónya would pass that way. Halfway
lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and across and along them a network
of shadows from the bare old lime trees fell on the snow and on the path. This
path led to the barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that
looked as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A tree
in the garden snapped with the frost, and then all was again perfectly silent. His
bosom seemed to inhale not air but the strength of eternal youth and gladness.
From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the bottom
step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he heard the voice of
an old maidservant saying, “Straight, straight, along the path, Miss. Only, don’t
look back.”
“I am not afraid,” answered Sónya’s voice, and along the path toward
Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sónya’s feet in her thin shoes.
Sónya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of paces
away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas she had known
and always slightly feared. He was in a woman’s dress, with tousled hair and a
happy smile new to Sónya. She ran rapidly toward him.
“Quite different and yet the same,” thought Nicholas, looking at her face all lit
up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the cloak that covered her head,
embraced her, pressed her to him, and kissed her on the lips that wore a
mustache and had a smell of burnt cork. Sónya kissed him full on the lips, and
disengaging her little hands pressed them to his cheeks.
“Sónya!... Nicholas!”... was all they said. They ran to the barn and then back
again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back porch.
CHAPTER XII
When they all drove back from Pelagéya Danílovna’s, Natásha, who always
saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss should go
back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sónya with Nicholas and the maids.
On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing and kept
peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sónya’s face and searching
beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his present Sónya from
whom he had resolved never to be parted again. He looked and recognizing in
her both the old and the new Sónya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt
cork of the sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and,
looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself
again in fairyland.
“Sónya, is it well with thee?” he asked from time to time.
“Yes!” she replied. “And with thee?”
When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and ran for a
moment to Natásha’s sleigh and stood on its wing.
“Natásha!” he whispered in French, “do you know I have made up my mind
about Sónya?”
“Have you told her?” asked Natásha, suddenly beaming all over with joy.
“Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!... Natásha
—are you glad?”
“I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I did not tell
you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart she has, Nicholas! I am
horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy while Sónya was not,”
continued Natásha. “Now I am so glad! Well, run back to her.”
“No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!” cried Nicholas, peering into her
face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and bewitchingly
tender that he had not seen in her before. “Natásha, it’s magical, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she replied. “You have done splendidly.”
“Had I seen her before as she is now,” thought Nicholas, “I should long ago
have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me, and all would
have been well.”
“So you are glad and I have done right?”
“Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it. Mamma
said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! I nearly stormed
at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of Sónya, for there is
nothing but good in her.”
“Then it’s all right?” said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the expression of his
sister’s face to see if she was in earnest. Then he jumped down and, his boots
scrunching the snow, ran back to his sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian,
with mustache and beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still
sitting there, and that Circassian was Sónya, and that Sónya was certainly his
future happy and loving wife.
When they reached home and had told their mother how they had spent the
evening at the Melyukóvs’, the girls went to their bedroom. When they had
undressed, but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a long time
talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live when they were
married, how their husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be.
On Natásha’s table stood two looking glasses which Dunyásha had prepared
beforehand.
“Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too good!” said
Natásha, rising and going to the looking glasses.
“Sit down, Natásha; perhaps you’ll see him,” said Sónya.
Natásha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking glasses, and sat
down.
“I see someone with a mustache,” said Natásha, seeing her own face.
“You mustn’t laugh, Miss,” said Dunyásha.
With Sónya’s help and the maid’s, Natásha got the glass she held into the right
position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious expression and she sat
silent. She sat a long time looking at the receding line of candles reflected in the
glasses and expecting (from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince
Andrew, in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was to
take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, she saw nothing.
She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the looking glasses.
“Why is it others see things and I don’t?” she said. “You sit down now, Sónya.
You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I feel so frightened!”
Sónya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began looking.
“Now, Miss Sónya is sure to see something,” whispered Dunyásha; “while
you do nothing but laugh.”
Sónya heard this and Natásha’s whisper:
“I know she will. She saw something last year.”
For about three minutes all were silent.
“Of course she will!” whispered Natásha, but did not finish... suddenly Sónya
pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her eyes with her hand.
“Oh, Natásha!” she cried.
“Did you see? Did you? What was it?” exclaimed Natásha, holding up the
looking glass.
Sónya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to get up when
she heard Natásha say, “Of course she will!” She did not wish to disappoint
either Dunyásha or Natásha, but it was hard to sit still. She did not herself know
how or why the exclamation escaped her when she covered her eyes.
“You saw him?” urged Natásha, seizing her hand.
“Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him,” Sónya could not help saying, not yet knowing
whom Natásha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.
“But why shouldn’t I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who can
tell whether I saw anything or not?” flashed through Sónya’s mind.
“Yes, I saw him,” she said.
“How? Standing or lying?”
“No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying down.”
“Andrew lying? Is he ill?” asked Natásha, her frightened eyes fixed on her
friend.
“No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he turned to
me.” And when saying this she herself fancied she had really seen what she
described.
“Well, and then, Sónya?...”
“After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and red....”
“Sónya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how afraid
I am for him and for myself and about everything!...” Natásha began, and
without replying to Sónya’s words of comfort she got into bed, and long after her
candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless, gazing at the moonlight through
the frosty windowpanes.
CHAPTER XIII
Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his love for
Sónya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who had long noticed
what was going on between them and was expecting this declaration, listened to
him in silence and then told her son that he might marry whom he pleased, but
that neither she nor his father would give their blessing to such a marriage.
Nicholas, for the first time, felt that his mother was displeased with him and that,
despite her love for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without looking at her
son, she sent for her husband and, when he came, tried briefly and coldly to
inform him of the facts, in her son’s presence, but unable to restrain herself she
burst into tears of vexation and left the room. The old count began irresolutely to
admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his purpose. Nicholas replied that he
could not go back on his word, and his father, sighing and evidently
disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to the countess. In all his
encounters with his son, the count was always conscious of his own guilt toward
him for having wasted the family fortune, and so he could not be angry with him
for refusing to marry an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sónya. On this
occasion, he was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had
not been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sónya could have been
wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mítenka and his uncomfortable
habits was to blame for the condition of the family finances.
The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son again, but a few
days later the countess sent for Sónya and, with a cruelty neither of them
expected, reproached her niece for trying to catch Nicholas and for ingratitude.
Sónya listened silently with downcast eyes to the countess’ cruel words, without
understanding what was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything
for her benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this case
she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She could not help
loving the countess and the whole Rostóv family, but neither could she help
loving Nicholas and knowing that his happiness depended on that love. She was
silent and sad and did not reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and
went to have an explanation with his mother. He first implored her to forgive
him and Sónya and consent to their marriage, then he threatened that if she
molested Sónya he would at once marry her secretly.
The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her before, replied
that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying without his father’s
consent, and he could do the same, but that she would never receive that
intriguer as her daughter.
Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told his mother
he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his feelings, but if that were
so, he would say for the last time.... But he had no time to utter the decisive word
which the expression of his face caused his mother to await with terror, and
which would perhaps have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He
had not time to say it, for Natásha, with a pale and set face, entered the room
from the door at which she had been listening.
“Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I tell you!...”
she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.
“Mamma darling, it’s not at all so... my poor, sweet darling,” she said to her
mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a rupture gazed at her
son with terror, but in the obstinacy and excitement of the conflict could not and
would not give way.
“Nicholas, I’ll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling,” said
Natásha.
Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which she was
aiming.
The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter’s breast, while
Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.
Natásha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded that
Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sónya should not be troubled,
while he on his side promised not to undertake anything without his parents’
knowledge.
Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment, to retire from
the army and return and marry Sónya, Nicholas, serious, sorrowful, and at
variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him, passionately in love, left at
the beginning of January to rejoin his regiment.
After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostóv household were more depressing
than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.
Sónya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more so on
account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting toward her. The
count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of his affairs, which called
for some decisive action. Their town house and estate near Moscow had
inevitably to be sold, and for this they had to go to Moscow. But the countess’
health obliged them to delay their departure from day to day.
Natásha, who had borne the first period of separation from her betrothed
lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and impatient every day.
The thought that her best days, which she would have employed in loving him,
were being vainly wasted, with no advantage to anyone, tormented her
incessantly. His letters for the most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that
while she lived only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new
places and new people that interested him. The more interesting his letters were
the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from giving her any comfort,
seemed to her a wearisome and artificial obligation. She could not write, because
she could not conceive the possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a
thousandth part of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to
him formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no importance
herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess corrected her mistakes in
spelling.
There was still no improvement in the countess’ health, but it was impossible
to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natásha’s trousseau had to be
ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew was expected in Moscow,
where old Prince Bolkónski was spending the winter, and Natásha felt sure he
had already arrived.
So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sónya and
Natásha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.
BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
CHAPTER I
After Prince Andrew’s engagement to Natásha, Pierre without any apparent
cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before. Firmly convinced as
he was of the truths revealed to him by his benefactor, and happy as he had been
in perfecting his inner man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor—
all the zest of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natásha
and the death of Joseph Alexéevich, the news of which reached him almost at
the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a brilliant wife who
now enjoyed the favors of a very important personage, acquaintance with all
Petersburg, and his court service with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly
seemed to Pierre unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary, avoided
the company of the Brothers, began going to the club again, drank a great deal,
and came once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a life that the
Countess Hélène thought it necessary to speak severely to him about it. Pierre
felt that she was right, and to avoid compromising her went away to Moscow.
In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded and
fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as soon as, driving
through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with innumerable tapers burning
before the golden covers of the icons, the Krémlin Square with its snow
undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers and hovels of the Sívtsev Vrazhók,
those old Moscovites who desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending
their days leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls,
and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow he
felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing gown.
Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received Pierre
like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready awaiting him. For
Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest, most intellectual, merriest, and
most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless, genial nobleman of the old Russian
type. His purse was always empty because it was open to everyone.
Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent societies, gypsy
choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees, Freemasons, churches, and books—
no one and nothing met with a refusal from him, and had it not been for two
friends who had borrowed large sums from him and taken him under their
protection, he would have given everything away. There was never a dinner or
soiree at the club without him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa after
two bottles of Margaux he was surrounded, and talking, disputing, and joking
began. When there were quarrels, his kindly smile and well-timed jests
reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic dinners were dull and dreary when he
was not there.
When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly smile,
yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive off somewhere with
them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the young men. At balls he
danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies, married and unmarried, liked him
because without making love to any of them, he was equally amiable to all,
especially after supper. “Il est charmant; il n’a pas de sexe,” * they said of him.
* “He is charming; he has no sex.”
At first she heard only Métivier’s voice, then her father’s, then both voices
began speaking at the same time, the door was flung open, and on the threshold
appeared the handsome figure of the terrified Métivier with his shock of black
hair, and the prince in his dressing gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and
the pupils of his eyes rolled downwards.
“You don’t understand?” shouted the prince, “but I do! French spy, slave of
Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you...” and he slammed the
door.
Métivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne who at
the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.
“The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head. Keep calm, I
will call again tomorrow,” said Métivier; and putting his fingers to his lips he
hastened away.
Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry: “Spies,
traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment’s peace in my own house!”
After Métivier’s departure the old prince called his daughter in, and the whole
weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a spy had been admitted.
Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a list, and not to admit anyone who
was not on that list? Then why was that scoundrel admitted? She was the cause
of it all. With her, he said, he could not have a moment’s peace and could not die
quietly.
“No, ma’am! We must part, we must part! Understand that, understand it! I
cannot endure any more,” he said, and left the room. Then, as if afraid she might
find some means of consolation, he returned and trying to appear calm added:
“And don’t imagine I have said this in a moment of anger. I am calm. I have
thought it over, and it will be carried out—we must part; so find some place for
yourself....” But he could not restrain himself and with the virulence of which
only one who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself, he shook his fists at
her and screamed:
“If only some fool would marry her!” Then he slammed the door, sent for
Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.
At two o’clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.
These guests—the famous Count Rostopchín, Prince Lopukhín with his
nephew, General Chatróv an old war comrade of the prince’s, and of the younger
generation Pierre and Borís Drubetskóy—awaited the prince in the drawing
room.
Borís, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been
anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkónski, and had contrived to
ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his case made an exception to the
rule of not receiving bachelors in his house.
The prince’s house did not belong to what is known as fashionable society, but
his little circle—though not much talked about in town—was one it was more
flattering to be received in than any other. Borís had realized this the week
before when the commander in chief in his presence invited Rostopchín to
dinner on St. Nicholas’ Day, and Rostopchín had replied that he could not come:
“On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince Nicholas
Bolkónski.”
“Oh, yes, yes!” replied the commander in chief. “How is he?...”
The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty old-fashioned
drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn gathering of a court of
justice. All were silent or talked in low tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious
and taciturn. Princess Mary seemed even quieter and more diffident than usual.
The guests were reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood for
their conversation. Count Rostopchín alone kept the conversation going, now
relating the latest town news, and now the latest political gossip.
Lopukhín and the old general occasionally took part in the conversation.
Prince Bolkónski listened as a presiding judge receives a report, only now and
then, silently or by a brief word, showing that he took heed of what was being
reported to him. The tone of the conversation was such as indicated that no one
approved of what was being done in the political world. Incidents were related
evidently confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to worse,
but whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker always stopped, or
was stopped, at the point beyond which his criticism might touch the sovereign
himself.
At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon’s seizure of the
Duke of Oldenburg’s territory, and the Russian Note, hostile to Napoleon, which
had been sent to all the European courts.
“Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel,” said Count
Rostopchín, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times before. “One only
wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the crowned heads. Now the Pope’s
turn has come and Bonaparte doesn’t scruple to depose the head of the Catholic
Church—yet all keep silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the
seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg’s territory, and even...” Count Rostopchín
paused, feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was
impossible.
“Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of Oldenburg,”
said Prince Bolkónski. “He shifts the Dukes about as I might move my serfs
from Bald Hills to Boguchárovo or my Ryazán estates.”
“The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength of
character and resignation,” remarked Borís, joining in respectfully.
He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the honor of
being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkónski glanced at the young man as if
about to say something in reply, but changed his mind, evidently considering
him too young.
“I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was surprised how
badly the Note was worded,” remarked Count Rostopchín in the casual tone of a
man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.
Pierre looked at Rostopchín with naïve astonishment, not understanding why
he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the Note.
“Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded,” he asked, “so long as its
substance is forcible?”
“My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should be easy to
have a good style,” returned Count Rostopchín.
Pierre now understood the count’s dissatisfaction with the wording of the
Note.
“One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up,” remarked the
old prince. “There in Petersburg they are always writing—not notes only but
even new laws. My Andrew there has written a whole volume of laws for
Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!” and he laughed unnaturally.
There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general cleared his
throat to draw attention.
“Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The figure cut by
the new French ambassador.”
“Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His Majesty’s
presence.”
“His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the march past,”
continued the general, “and it seems the ambassador took no notice and allowed
himself to reply that: ‘We in France pay no attention to such trifles!’ The
Emperor did not condescend to reply. At the next review, they say, the Emperor
did not once deign to address him.”
All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it was
impossible to pass any judgment.
“Impudent fellows!” said the prince. “You know Métivier? I turned him out of
my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him in spite of my request
that they should let no one in,” he went on, glancing angrily at his daughter.
And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and the
reasons that convinced him that Métivier was a spy. Though these reasons were
very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.
After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to congratulate the old
prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.
He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled, clean-shaven
cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told her that he had not forgotten
the morning’s talk, that his decision remained in force, and only the presence of
visitors hindered his speaking of it to her now.
When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the old men
sat together.
Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the
impending war.
He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long as we
sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into European affairs,
into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. “We ought not to fight
either for or against Austria. Our political interests are all in the East, and in
regard to Bonaparte the only thing is to have an armed frontier and a firm policy,
and he will never dare to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!”
“How can we fight the French, Prince?” said Count Rostopchín. “Can we arm
ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our youths, look at our
ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our Kingdom of Heaven.”
He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.
“French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you turned
Métivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a Frenchman and a
scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their knees. I went to a party last
night, and there out of five ladies three were Roman Catholics and had the
Pope’s indulgence for doing woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit
there nearly naked, like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah,
when one looks at our young people, Prince, one would like to take Peter the
Great’s old cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the Russian way till
all the nonsense jumps out of them.”
All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchín with a smile and wagged
his head approvingly.
“Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!” said Rostopchín, getting up with
characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to the prince.
“Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of hearing
him!” said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and offering his cheek to be
kissed.
Following Rostopchín’s example the others also rose.
CHAPTER IV
Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men’s talk and faultfinding,
understood nothing of what she heard; she only wondered whether the guests
had all observed her father’s hostile attitude toward her. She did not even notice
the special attentions and amiabilities shown her during dinner by Borís
Drubetskóy, who was visiting them for the third time already.
Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to Pierre, who hat
in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of the guests to approach her
after the old prince had gone out and they were left alone in the drawing room.
“May I stay a little longer?” he said, letting his stout body sink into an
armchair beside her.
“Oh yes,” she answered. “You noticed nothing?” her look asked.
Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight before him
and smiled quietly.
“Have you known that young man long, Princess?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Drubetskóy.”
“No, not long....”
“Do you like him?”
“Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?” said
Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning’s conversation with her father.
“Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from
Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an heiress.”
“You have observed that?” said Princess Mary.
“Yes,” returned Pierre with a smile, “and this young man now manages
matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I can read him
like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay siege to—you or
Mademoiselle Julie Karágina. He is very attentive to her.”
“He visits them?”
“Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?” said Pierre
with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good humored raillery
for which he so often reproached himself in his diary.
“No,” replied Princess Mary.
“To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very
melancholy with Mademoiselle Karágina,” said Pierre.
“Really?” asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre’s kindly face and still
thinking of her own sorrow. “It would be a relief,” thought she, “if I ventured to
confide what I am feeling to someone. I should like to tell everything to Pierre.
He is kind and generous. It would be a relief. He would give me advice.”
“Would you marry him?”
“Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!” she
cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice. “Ah, how bitter it
is to love someone near to you and to feel that...” she went on in a trembling
voice, “that you can do nothing for him but grieve him, and to know that you
cannot alter this. Then there is only one thing left—to go away, but where could
I go?”
“What is wrong? What is it, Princess?”
But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst into tears.
“I don’t know what is the matter with me today. Don’t take any notice—forget
what I have said!”
Pierre’s gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the princess,
asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him; but she only repeated
that she begged him to forget what she had said, that she did not remember what
she had said, and that she had no trouble except the one he knew of—that Prince
Andrew’s marriage threatened to cause a rupture between father and son.
“Have you any news of the Rostóvs?” she asked, to change the subject. “I was
told they are coming soon. I am also expecting Andrew any day. I should like
them to meet here.”
“And how does he now regard the matter?” asked Pierre, referring to the old
prince.
Princess Mary shook her head.
“What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The thing is
impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first moments. I wish they
would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her. You have known them a long
time,” said Princess Mary. “Tell me honestly the whole truth: what sort of girl is
she, and what do you think of her?—The real truth, because you know Andrew
is risking so much doing this against his father’s will that I should like to
know....”
An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and repeated
requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on the princess’ part toward
her future sister-in-law and a wish that he should disapprove of Andrew’s
choice; but in reply he said what he felt rather than what he thought.
“I don’t know how to answer your question,” he said, blushing without
knowing why. “I really don’t know what sort of girl she is; I can’t analyze her at
all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I don’t know. That is all one can
say about her.”
Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: “Yes, that’s what I
expected and feared.”
“Is she clever?” she asked.
Pierre considered.
“I think not,” he said, “and yet—yes. She does not deign to be clever.... Oh no,
she is simply enchanting, and that is all.”
Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.
“Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do.”
“I hear they are expected very soon,” said Pierre.
Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her future
sister-in-law as soon as the Rostóvs arrived and to try to accustom the old prince
to her.
CHAPTER V
Borís had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg, so with the
same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered between the two
richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though Princess Mary despite her
plainness seemed to him more attractive than Julie, he, without knowing why,
felt awkward about paying court to her. When they had last met on the old
prince’s name day, she had answered at random all his attempts to talk
sentimentally, evidently not listening to what he was saying.
Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a manner
peculiar to herself.
She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become very
wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself not merely as
good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She was confirmed in this
delusion by the fact that she had become a very wealthy heiress and also by the
fact that the older she grew the less dangerous she became to men, and the more
freely they could associate with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees,
and the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring any
obligation. A man who would have been afraid ten years before of going every
day to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there, for fear of
compromising her and committing himself, would now go boldly every day and
treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless acquaintance.
That winter the Karágins’ house was the most agreeable and hospitable in
Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner parties, a large company,
chiefly of men, gathered there every day, supping at midnight and staying till
three in the morning. Julie never missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her
dresses were always of the latest fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be
disillusioned about everything and told everyone that she did not believe either
in friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life, and expected peace only
“yonder.” She adopted the tone of one who has suffered a great disappointment,
like a girl who has either lost the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him.
Though nothing of the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light,
and had even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life. This
melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not hinder the young
people who came to her house from passing the time pleasantly. Every visitor
who came to the house paid his tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess,
and then amused himself with society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and
bouts rimés, which were in vogue at the Karágins’. Only a few of these young
men, among them Borís, entered more deeply into Julie’s melancholy, and with
these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of all worldly
things, and to them she showed her albums filled with mournful sketches,
maxims, and verses.
To Borís, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship as she who
had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him her album. Borís
sketched two trees in the album and wrote: “Rustic trees, your dark branches
shed gloom and melancholy upon me.”
On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
Ah! contre les douleurs il n’y a pas d’autre asile. *
* Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
For Borís, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Borís read Poor
Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading because of the
emotions that choked him. Meeting at large gatherings Julie and Borís looked on
one another as the only souls who understood one another in a world of
indifferent people.
Anna Mikháylovna, who often visited the Karágins, while playing cards with
the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie’s dowry (she was to have two
estates in Pénza and the Nizhegórod forests). Anna Mikháylovna regarded the
refined sadness that united her son to the wealthy Julie with emotion, and
resignation to the Divine will.
“You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie,” she said to the
daughter. “Borís says his soul finds repose at your house. He has suffered so
many disappointments and is so sensitive,” said she to the mother. “Ah, my dear,
I can’t tell you how fond I have grown of Julie latterly,” she said to her son. “But
who could help loving her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Borís, Borís!”—she
paused. “And how I pity her mother,” she went on; “today she showed me her
accounts and letters from Pénza (they have enormous estates there), and she,
poor thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!”
Borís smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. He laughed
blandly at her naïve diplomacy but listened to what she had to say, and
sometimes questioned her carefully about the Pénza and Nizhegórod estates.
Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy adorer and was
ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of repulsion for her, for her passionate
desire to get married, for her artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing
the possibility of real love still restrained Borís. His leave was expiring. He spent
every day and whole days at the Karágins’, and every day on thinking the matter
over told himself that he would propose tomorrow. But in Julie’s presence,
looking at her red face and chin (nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and
her expression of continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an
unnatural rapture of married bliss, Borís could not utter the decisive words,
though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of those
Pénza and Nizhegórod estates and had apportioned the use of the income from
them. Julie saw Borís’ indecision, and sometimes the thought occurred to her
that she was repulsive to him, but her feminine self-deception immediately
supplied her with consolation, and she told herself that he was only shy from
love. Her melancholy, however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before
Borís’ departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Borís’ leave of
absence was expiring, Anatole Kurágin made his appearance in Moscow, and of
course in the Karágins’ drawing room, and Julie, suddenly abandoning her
melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive to Kurágin.
“My dear,” said Anna Mikháylovna to her son, “I know from a reliable source
that Prince Vasíli has sent his son to Moscow to get him married to Julie. I am so
fond of Julie that I should be sorry for her. What do you think of it, my dear?”
The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that whole
month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing all the revenue from
the Pénza estates which he had already mentally apportioned and put to proper
use fall into the hands of another, and especially into the hands of that idiot
Anatole, pained Borís. He drove to the Karágins’ with the firm intention of
proposing. Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she
had enjoyed yesterday’s ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though Borís had
come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore meant to be tender, he
began speaking irritably of feminine inconstancy, of how easily women can turn
from sadness to joy, and how their moods depend solely on who happens to be
paying court to them. Julie was offended and replied that it was true that a
woman needs variety, and the same thing over and over again would weary
anyone.
“Then I should advise you...” Borís began, wishing to sting her; but at that
instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have to leave Moscow
without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly wasted his efforts—which
was a thing he never allowed to happen.
He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes to avoid
seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and said:
“I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary...”
He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability had
suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were fixed on him
with greedy expectation. “I can always arrange so as not to see her often,”
thought Borís. “The affair has been begun and must be finished!” He blushed
hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and said:
“You know my feelings for you!”
There was no need to say more: Julie’s face shone with triumph and self-
satisfaction; but she forced Borís to say all that is said on such occasions—that
he loved her and had never loved any other woman more than her. She knew that
for the Pénza estates and Nizhegórod forests she could demand this, and she
received what she demanded.
The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom and
melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house in
Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.
CHAPTER VI
At the end of January old Count Rostóv went to Moscow with Natásha and
Sónya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it was impossible
to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in Moscow any day, the
trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near Moscow had to be sold, besides
which the opportunity of presenting his future daughter-in-law to old Prince
Bolkónski while he was in Moscow could not be missed. The Rostóvs’ Moscow
house had not been heated that winter and, as they had come only for a short
time and the countess was not with them, the count decided to stay with Márya
Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, who had long been pressing her hospitality on them.
Late one evening the Rostóvs’ four sleighs drove into Márya Dmítrievna’s
courtyard in the old Konyúsheny street. Márya Dmítrievna lived alone. She had
already married off her daughter, and her sons were all in the service.
She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly, loudly, and
bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach to others for any
weakness, passion, or temptation—the possibility of which she did not admit.
From early in the morning, wearing a dressing jacket, she attended to her
household affairs, and then she drove out: on holy days to church and after the
service to jails and prisons on affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On
ordinary days, after dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of
whom there were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing
meal at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she played a
game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a new book read to her
while she knitted. She rarely made an exception and went out to pay visits, and
then only to the most important persons in the town.
She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostóvs arrived and the pulley of the
hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the Rostóvs and their servants.
Márya Dmítrievna, with her spectacles hanging down on her nose and her head
flung back, stood in the hall doorway looking with a stern, grim face at the new
arrivals. One might have thought she was angry with the travelers and would
immediately turn them out, had she not at the same time been giving careful
instructions to the servants for the accommodation of the visitors and their
belongings.
“The count’s things? Bring them here,” she said, pointing to the portmanteaus
and not greeting anyone. “The young ladies’? There to the left. Now what are
you dawdling for?” she cried to the maids. “Get the samovar ready!... You’ve
grown plumper and prettier,” she remarked, drawing Natásha (whose cheeks
were glowing from the cold) to her by the hood. “Foo! You are cold! Now take
off your things, quick!” she shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand.
“You’re half frozen, I’m sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sónya dear!”
she added, turning to Sónya and indicating by this French greeting her slightly
contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.
When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things and tidied
themselves up after their journey, Márya Dmítrievna kissed them all in due
order.
“I’m heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was high time,”
she said, giving Natásha a significant look. “The old man is here and his son’s
expected any day. You’ll have to make his acquaintance. But we’ll speak of that
later on,” she added, glancing at Sónya with a look that showed she did not want
to speak of it in her presence. “Now listen,” she said to the count. “What do you
want tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshín?” she crooked one of her
fingers. “The sniveling Anna Mikháylovna? That’s two. She’s here with her son.
The son is getting married! Then Bezúkhov, eh? He is here too, with his wife. He
ran away from her and she came galloping after him. He dined with me on
Wednesday. As for them”—and she pointed to the girls—“tomorrow I’ll take
them first to the Iberian shrine of the Mother of God, and then we’ll drive to the
Super-Rogue’s. I suppose you’ll have everything new. Don’t judge by me:
sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irína Vasílevna
came to see me; she was an awful sight—looked as if she had put two barrels on
her arms. You know not a day passes now without some new fashion.... And
what have you to do yourself?” she asked the count sternly.
“One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a purchaser
has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If you will be so kind, I’ll
fix a time and go down to the estate just for a day, and leave my lassies with
you.”
“All right. All right. They’ll be safe with me, as safe as in Chancery! I’ll take
them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet them a bit,” said Márya
Dmítrievna, touching her goddaughter and favorite, Natásha, on the cheek with
her large hand.
Next morning Márya Dmítrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian shrine of
the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so afraid of Márya
Dmítrievna that she always let her have costumes at a loss merely to get rid of
her. Márya Dmítrievna ordered almost the whole trousseau. When they got home
she turned everybody out of the room except Natásha, and then called her pet to
her armchair.
“Well, now we’ll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed. You’ve hooked a
fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I’ve known him since he was so high.”
She held her hand a couple of feet from the ground. Natásha blushed happily. “I
like him and all his family. Now listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much
dislikes his son’s marrying. The old fellow’s crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew
is not a child and can shift without him, but it’s not nice to enter a family against
a father’s will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly. You’re a clever girl
and you’ll know how to manage. Be kind, and use your wits. Then all will be
well.”
Natásha remained silent, from shyness Márya Dmítrievna supposed, but really
because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her love of Prince
Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human affairs that no one could
understand it. She loved and knew Prince Andrew, he loved her only, and was to
come one of these days and take her. She wanted nothing more.
“You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your future
sister-in-law. ‘Husbands’ sisters bring up blisters,’ but this one wouldn’t hurt a
fly. She has asked me to bring you two together. Tomorrow you’ll go with your
father to see her. Be very nice and affectionate to her: you’re younger than she.
When he comes, he’ll find you already know his sister and father and are liked
by them. Am I right or not? Won’t that be best?”
“Yes, it will,” Natásha answered reluctantly.
CHAPTER VII
Next day, by Márya Dmítrievna’s advice, Count Rostóv took Natásha to call
on Prince Nicholas Bolkónski. The count did not set out cheerfully on this visit,
at heart he felt afraid. He well remembered the last interview he had had with the
old prince at the time of the enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner
he had had to listen to an angry reprimand for not having provided his full quota
of men. Natásha, on the other hand, having put on her best gown, was in the
highest spirits. “They can’t help liking me,” she thought. “Everybody always has
liked me, and I am so willing to do anything they wish, so ready to be fond of
him—for being his father—and of her—for being his sister—that there is no
reason for them not to like me....”
They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvízhenka and entered the
vestibule.
“Well, the Lord have mercy on us!” said the count, half in jest, half in earnest;
but Natásha noticed that her father was flurried on entering the anteroom and
inquired timidly and softly whether the prince and princess were at home.
When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the
servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by another
in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a maidservant ran into
the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning the princess. At last an old,
cross looking footman came and announced to the Rostóvs that the prince was
not receiving, but that the princess begged them to walk up. The first person who
came to meet the visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father
and daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess’ room. The
princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in patches, ran in to meet
the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly trying to appear cordial and at ease.
From the first glance Princess Mary did not like Natásha. She thought her too
fashionably dressed, frivolously gay and vain. She did not at all realize that
before having seen her future sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by
involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by jealousy of
her brother’s love for her. Apart from this insuperable antipathy to her, Princess
Mary was agitated just then because on the Rostóvs’ being announced, the old
prince had shouted that he did not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do
so if she chose, but they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to
receive them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in some
freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostóvs’ visit.
“There, my dear princess, I’ve brought you my songstress,” said the count,
bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old prince might appear. “I
am so glad you should get to know one another... very sorry the prince is still
ailing,” and after a few more commonplace remarks he rose. “If you’ll allow me
to leave my Natásha in your hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I’ll drive
round to see Anna Semënovna, it’s quite near in the Dogs’ Square, and then I’ll
come back for her.”
The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told his
daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk to one another
freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of encountering the old
prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention this to his daughter, but
Natásha noticed her father’s nervousness and anxiety and felt mortified by it.
She blushed for him, grew still angrier at having blushed, and looked at the
princess with a bold and defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of
anybody. The princess told the count that she would be delighted, and only
begged him to stay longer at Anna Semënovna’s, and he departed.
Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary—who wished to
have a tête-à-tête with Natásha—Mademoiselle Bourienne remained in the room
and persistently talked about Moscow amusements and theaters. Natásha felt
offended by the hesitation she had noticed in the anteroom, by her father’s
nervousness, and by the unnatural manner of the princess who—she thought—
was making a favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did
not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected, and dry. Natásha
suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an offhand air which
alienated Princess Mary still more. After five minutes of irksome, constrained
conversation, they heard the sound of slippered feet rapidly approaching.
Princess Mary looked frightened.
The door opened and the old prince, in a dressing gown and a white nightcap,
came in.
“Ah, madam!” he began. “Madam, Countess... Countess Rostóva, if I am not
mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not know, madam. God
is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with a visit, and I came in
such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg you to excuse me... God is my
witness, I didn’t know—” he repeated, stressing the word “God” so unnaturally
and so unpleasantly that Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to
look either at her father or at Natásha.
Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do. Mademoiselle
Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.
“I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not know,”
muttered the old man, and after looking Natásha over from head to foot he went
out.
Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this apparition
and began speaking about the prince’s indisposition. Natásha and Princess Mary
looked at one another in silence, and the longer they did so without saying what
they wanted to say, the greater grew their antipathy to one another.
When the count returned, Natásha was impolitely pleased and hastened to get
away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who could place her in
such an embarrassing position and had spent half an hour with her without once
mentioning Prince Andrew. “I couldn’t begin talking about him in the presence
of that Frenchwoman,” thought Natásha. The same thought was meanwhile
tormenting Princess Mary. She knew what she ought to have said to Natásha, but
she had been unable to say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way,
and because, without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of the
marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess Mary went up
hurriedly to Natásha, took her by the hand, and said with a deep sigh:
“Wait, I must...”
Natásha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.
“Dear Natalie,” said Princess Mary, “I want you to know that I am glad my
brother has found happiness....”
She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natásha noticed this and
guessed its reason.
“I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now,” she said with
external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears choking her.
“What have I said and what have I done?” thought she, as soon as she was out
of the room.
They waited a long time for Natásha to come to dinner that day. She sat in her
room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing. Sónya stood beside her,
kissing her hair.
“Natásha, what is it about?” she asked. “What do they matter to you? It will
all pass, Natásha.”
“But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I...”
“Don’t talk about it, Natásha. It wasn’t your fault so why should you mind?
Kiss me,” said Sónya.
Natásha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed her wet
face against her.
“I can’t tell you, I don’t know. No one’s to blame,” said Natásha—“It’s my
fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn’t he come?...”
She came in to dinner with red eyes. Márya Dmítrievna, who knew how the
prince had received the Rostóvs, pretended not to notice how upset Natásha was
and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the count and the other guests.
CHAPTER VIII
That evening the Rostóvs went to the Opera, for which Márya Dmítrievna had
taken a box.
Natásha did not want to go, but could not refuse Márya Dmítrievna’s kind
offer which was intended expressly for her. When she came ready dressed into
the ballroom to await her father, and looking in the large mirror there saw that
she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender
sadness.
“O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but differently.
I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply embrace him, cling to
him, and make him look at me with those searching inquiring eyes with which
he has so often looked at me, and then I would make him laugh as he used to
laugh. And his eyes—how I see those eyes!” thought Natásha. “And what do his
father and sister matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and
those eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not think
of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for the present. I can’t
bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!” and she turned away from the
glass, making an effort not to cry. “And how can Sónya love Nicholas so calmly
and quietly and wait so long and so patiently?” thought she, looking at Sónya,
who also came in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. “No, she’s altogether
different. I can’t!”
Natásha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not enough for
her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at once, to embrace the
man she loved, to speak and hear from him words of love such as filled her
heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her father, pensively watching the
lights of the street lamps flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder
and more in love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen
into the line of carriages, the Rostóvs’ carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels
squeaking over the snow. Natásha and Sónya, holding up their dresses, jumped
out quickly. The count got out helped by the footmen, and, passing among men
and women who were entering and the program sellers, they all three went along
the corridor to the first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was
already audible.
“Natásha, your hair!...” whispered Sónya.
An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and opened
the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the door rows of
brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and shoulders, and noisy
stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before their eyes. A lady entering the next
box shot a glance of feminine envy at Natásha. The curtain had not yet risen and
the overture was being played. Natásha, smoothing her gown, went in with
Sónya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. A sensation
she had not experienced for a long time—that of hundreds of eyes looking at her
bare arms and neck—suddenly affected her both agreeably and disagreeably and
called up a whole crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that
feeling.
The two remarkably pretty girls, Natásha and Sónya, with Count Rostóv who
had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general attention.
Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natásha’s engagement to Prince Andrew,
and knew that the Rostóvs had lived in the country ever since, and all looked
with curiosity at a fiancée who was making one of the best matches in Russia.
Natásha’s looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the country, and that
evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly pretty. She struck those who
saw her by her fullness of life and beauty, combined with her indifference to
everything about her. Her black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking
anyone, and her delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of
the box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in time
to the music, crumpling her program. “Look, there’s Alénina,” said Sónya, “with
her mother, isn’t it?”
“Dear me, Michael Kirílovich has grown still stouter!” remarked the count.
“Look at our Anna Mikháylovna—what a headdress she has on!”
“The Karágins, Julie—and Borís with them. One can see at once that they’re
engaged....”
“Drubetskóy has proposed?”
“Oh yes, I heard it today,” said Shinshín, coming into the Rostóvs’ box.
Natásha looked in the direction in which her father’s eyes were turned and
saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on her face and a string of
pearls round her thick red neck—which Natásha knew was covered with powder.
Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning over with an ear to Julie’s mouth, was
Borís’ handsome smoothly brushed head. He looked at the Rostóvs from under
his brows and said something, smiling, to his betrothed.
“They are talking about us, about me and him!” thought Natásha. “And he no
doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn’t trouble themselves! If only
they knew how little I am concerned about any of them.”
Behind them sat Anna Mikháylovna wearing a green headdress and with a
happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their box was pervaded
by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natásha knew so well and liked
so much. She turned away and suddenly remembered all that had been so
humiliating in her morning’s visit.
“What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh, better not
think of it—not till he comes back!” she told herself, and began looking at the
faces, some strange and some familiar, in the stalls. In the front, in the very
center, leaning back against the orchestra rail, stood Dólokhov in a Persian dress,
his curly hair brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the
audience, well aware that he was attracting everyone’s attention, yet as much at
ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow’s most
brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.
The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sónya and pointed to her former
adorer.
“Do you recognize him?” said he. “And where has he sprung from?” he asked,
turning to Shinshín. “Didn’t he vanish somewhere?”
“He did,” replied Shinshín. “He was in the Caucasus and ran away from there.
They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling prince in Persia, where he
killed the Shah’s brother. Now all the Moscow ladies are mad about him! It’s
‘Dólokhov the Persian’ that does it! We never hear a word but Dólokhov is
mentioned. They swear by him, they offer him to you as they would a dish of
choice sterlet. Dólokhov and Anatole Kurágin have turned all our ladies’ heads.”
A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed plump
white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string of large pearls,
entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress and took a long time
settling into her place.
Natásha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls and
coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls. While Natásha
was fixing her gaze on her for the second time the lady looked round and,
meeting the count’s eyes, nodded to him and smiled. She was the Countess
Bezúkhova, Pierre’s wife, and the count, who knew everyone in society, leaned
over and spoke to her.
“Have you been here long, Countess?” he inquired. “I’ll call, I’ll call to kiss
your hand. I’m here on business and have brought my girls with me. They say
Semënova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used to forget us. Is he here?”
“Yes, he meant to look in,” answered Hélène, and glanced attentively at
Natásha.
Count Rostóv resumed his seat.
“Handsome, isn’t she?” he whispered to Natásha.
“Wonderful!” answered Natásha. “She’s a woman one could easily fall in love
with.”
Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the conductor tapped
with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in the stalls, and the curtain rose.
As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and all the
men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and all the women with gems
on their bare flesh, turned their whole attention with eager curiosity to the stage.
Natásha too began to look at it.
CHAPTER IX
The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides was some
painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a cloth stretched over
boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls in red bodices and white skirts.
One very fat girl in a white silk dress sat apart on a low bench, to the back of
which a piece of green cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When
they had finished their song the girl in white went up to the prompter’s box and a
man with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding a plume and a
dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his arms about.
First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, then they both
paused while the orchestra played and the man fingered the hand of the girl in
white, obviously awaiting the beat to start singing with her. They sang together
and everyone in the theater began clapping and shouting, while the man and
woman on the stage—who represented lovers—began smiling, spreading out
their arms, and bowing.
After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, all this seemed
grotesque and amazing to Natásha. She could not follow the opera nor even
listen to the music; she saw only the painted cardboard and the queerly dressed
men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so strangely in that brilliant light.
She knew what it was all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and
unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused at them. She
looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them the same sense of ridicule
and perplexity she herself experienced, but they all seemed attentive to what was
happening on the stage, and expressed delight which to Natásha seemed feigned.
“I suppose it has to be like this!” she thought. She kept looking round in turn at
the rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women in the
boxes, especially at Hélène in the next box, who—apparently quite unclothed—
sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking her eyes off the stage. And feeling the
bright light that flooded the whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd,
Natásha little by little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she was, nor
what was going on before her. As she looked and thought, the strangest fancies
unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through her mind: the idea occurred to
her of jumping onto the edge of the box and singing the air the actress was
singing, then she wished to touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting not far
from her, then to lean over to Hélène and tickle her.
At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, a door
leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostóvs’ box creaked, and the steps of
a belated arrival were heard. “There’s Kurágin!” whispered Shinshín. Countess
Bezúkhova turned smiling to the newcomer, and Natásha, following the direction
of that look, saw an exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box with
a self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kurágin whom she had
seen and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was now in an adjutant’s
uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. He moved with a restrained
swagger which would have been ridiculous had he not been so good-looking and
had his handsome face not worn such an expression of good-humored
complacency and gaiety. Though the performance was proceeding, he walked
deliberately down the carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly jingling
and his handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at Natásha he
approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her box, nodded
to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a motion toward Natásha.
“Mais charmante!” said he, evidently referring to Natásha, who did not
exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of his lips. Then
he took his place in the first row of the stalls and sat down beside Dólokhov,
nudging with his elbow in a friendly and offhand way that Dólokhov whom
others treated so fawningly. He winked at him gaily, smiled, and rested his foot
against the orchestra screen.
“How like the brother is to the sister,” remarked the count. “And how
handsome they both are!”
Shinshín, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some intrigue of
Kurágin’s in Moscow, and Natásha tried to overhear it just because he had said
she was “charmante.”
The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about, going out
and coming in.
Borís came to the Rostóvs’ box, received their congratulations very simply,
and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile conveyed to Natásha and
Sónya his fiancée’s invitation to her wedding, and went away. Natásha with a
gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and congratulated on his approaching
wedding that same Borís with whom she had formerly been in love. In the state
of intoxication she was in, everything seemed simple and natural.
The scantily clad Hélène smiled at everyone in the same way, and Natásha
gave Borís a similar smile.
Hélène’s box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another in their
wish to let everyone see that they knew her.
During the whole of that entr’acte Kurágin stood with Dólokhov in front of
the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostóvs’ box. Natásha knew he was talking
about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even turned so that he should see
her profile in what she thought was its most becoming aspect. Before the
beginning of the second act Pierre appeared in the stalls. The Rostóvs had not
seen him since their arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter
since Natásha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing anyone.
Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at and indicating the
Rostóvs’ box. On seeing Natásha Pierre grew animated and, hastily passing
between the rows, came toward their box. When he got there he leaned on his
elbows and, smiling, talked to her for a long time. While conversing with Pierre,
Natásha heard a man’s voice in Countess Bezúkhova’s box and something told
her it was Kurágin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed
straight into her eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that it seemed
strange to be so near him, to look at him like that, to be so sure he admired her,
and not to be acquainted with him.
In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there was a
round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were raised over the
footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep notes while many people
appeared from right and left wearing black cloaks and holding things like
daggers in their hands. They began waving their arms. Then some other people
ran in and began dragging away the maiden who had been in white and was now
in light blue. They did not drag her away at once, but sang with her for a long
time and then at last dragged her off, and behind the scenes something metallic
was struck three times and everyone knelt down and sang a prayer. All these
things were repeatedly interrupted by the enthusiastic shouts of the audience.
During this act every time Natásha looked toward the stalls she saw Anatole
Kurágin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair, staring at her. She was
pleased to see that he was captivated by her and it did not occur to her that there
was anything wrong in it.
When the second act was over Countess Bezúkhova rose, turned to the
Rostóvs’ box—her whole bosom completely exposed—beckoned the old count
with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered her box
began talking to him with an amiable smile.
“Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters,” said she. “The
whole town is singing their praises and I don’t even know them!”
Natásha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so pleased by
praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with pleasure.
“I want to become a Moscovite too, now,” said Hélène. “How is it you’re not
ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?”
Countess Bezúkhova quite deserved her reputation of being a fascinating
woman. She could say what she did not think—especially what was flattering—
quite simply and naturally.
“Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I am not
staying here long this time—nor are you—I will try to amuse them. I have
already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get to know you,” said
she to Natásha with her stereotyped and lovely smile. “I had heard about you
from my page, Drubetskóy. Have you heard he is getting married? And also from
my husband’s friend Bolkónski, Prince Andrew Bolkónski,” she went on with
special emphasis, implying that she knew of his relation to Natásha. To get better
acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come into her box for
the rest of the performance, and Natásha moved over to it.
The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles were
burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the walls. In the
middle stood what were probably a king and a queen. The king waved his right
arm and, evidently nervous, sang something badly and sat down on a crimson
throne. The maiden who had been first in white and then in light blue, now wore
only a smock, and stood beside the throne with her hair down. She sang
something mournfully, addressing the queen, but the king waved his arm
severely, and men and women with bare legs came in from both sides and began
dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily and one of
the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating from the others, went
behind the wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the middle of the stage, and
began jumping and striking one foot rapidly against the other. In the stalls
everyone clapped and shouted “bravo!” Then one of the men went into a corner
of the stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra struck up more loudly, and
this man with bare legs jumped very high and waved his feet about very rapidly.
(He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles a year for this art.)
Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries began clapping and shouting with
all their might, and the man stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides.
Then other men and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted
to the sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm came on,
chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the orchestra, everyone
ran off, again dragging one of their number away, and the curtain dropped. Once
more there was a terrible noise and clatter among the audience, and with
rapturous faces everyone began shouting: “Duport! Duport! Duport!” Natásha no
longer thought this strange. She looked about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.
“Isn’t Duport delightful?” Hélène asked her.
“Oh, yes,” replied Natásha.
CHAPTER X
During the entr’acte a whiff of cold air came into Hélène’s box, the door
opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush against anyone.
“Let me introduce my brother to you,” said Hélène, her eyes shifting uneasily
from Natásha to Anatole.
Natásha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young officer and
smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome at close
quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he had long wished to
have this happiness—ever since the Narýshkins’ ball in fact, at which he had had
the well-remembered pleasure of seeing her. Kurágin was much more sensible
and simple with women than among men. He talked boldly and naturally, and
Natásha was strangely and agreeably struck by the fact that there was nothing
formidable in this man about whom there was so much talk, but that on the
contrary his smile was most naïve, cheerful, and good-natured.
Kurágin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a previous
performance Semënova had fallen down on the stage.
“And do you know, Countess,” he said, suddenly addressing her as an old,
familiar acquaintance, “we are getting up a costume tournament; you ought to
take part in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet at the Karágins’! Please
come! No! Really, eh?” said he.
While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face, her neck,
and her bare arms. Natásha knew for certain that he was enraptured by her. This
pleased her, yet his presence made her feel constrained and oppressed. When she
was not looking at him she felt that he was looking at her shoulders, and she
involuntarily caught his eye so that he should look into hers rather than this. But
looking into his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier
of modesty she had always felt between herself and other men. She did not know
how it was that within five minutes she had come to feel herself terribly near to
this man. When she turned away she feared he might seize her from behind by
her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary things, yet
she felt that they were closer to one another than she had ever been to any man.
Natásha kept turning to Hélène and to her father, as if asking what it all meant,
but Hélène was engaged in conversation with a general and did not answer her
look, and her father’s eyes said nothing but what they always said: “Having a
good time? Well, I’m glad of it!”
During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole’s prominent
eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natásha, to break the silence, asked
him how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and blushed. She felt all the
time that by talking to him she was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as
though to encourage her.
“At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant ce sont
les jolies femmes, * isn’t that so? But now I like it very much indeed,” he said,
looking at her significantly. “You’ll come to the costume tournament, Countess?
Do come!” and putting out his hand to her bouquet and dropping his voice, he
added, “You will be the prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this
flower as a pledge!”
* Are the pretty women.
Natásha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did himself,
but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an improper intention. She did
not know what to say and turned away as if she had not heard his remark. But as
soon as she had turned away she felt that he was there, behind, so close behind
her.
“How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?” she asked
herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked straight into
his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the good-natured tenderness of his
smile vanquished her. She smiled just as he was doing, gazing straight into his
eyes. And again she felt with horror that no barrier lay between him and her.
The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. Natásha went
back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive to the world she found
herself in. All that was going on before her now seemed quite natural, but on the
other hand all her previous thoughts of her betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life
in the country did not once recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a
remote past.
In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his arm about,
till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he disappeared down below.
That was the only part of the fourth act that Natásha saw. She felt agitated and
tormented, and the cause of this was Kurágin whom she could not help
watching. As they were leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their
carriage, and helped them in. As he was putting Natásha in he pressed her arm
above the elbow. Agitated and flushed she turned round. He was looking at her
with glittering eyes, smiling tenderly.
Only after she had reached home was Natásha able clearly to think over what
had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she was
horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera, she gave a loud
exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.
“O God! I am lost!” she said to herself. “How could I let him?” She sat for a
long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to realize what had
happened to her, but was unable either to understand what had happened or what
she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure, and terrible. There in that enormous,
illuminated theater where the bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket,
jumped about to the music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the
nearly naked Hélène with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried “bravo!”—
there in the presence of that Hélène it had all seemed clear and simple; but now,
alone by herself, it was incomprehensible. “What is it? What was that terror I felt
of him? What is this gnawing of conscience I am feeling now?” she thought.
Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natásha have told all she was
feeling. She knew that Sónya with her severe and simple views would either not
understand it at all or would be horrified at such a confession. So Natásha tried
to solve what was torturing her by herself.
“Am I spoiled for Andrew’s love or not?” she asked herself, and with soothing
irony replied: “What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen to me? Nothing! I
have done nothing, I didn’t lead him on at all. Nobody will know and I shall
never see him again,” she told herself. “So it is plain that nothing has happened
and there is nothing to repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why ‘still?’
O God, why isn’t he here?” Natásha quieted herself for a moment, but again
some instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing had
happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew had perished. And
again in imagination she went over her whole conversation with Kurágin, and
again saw the face, gestures, and tender smile of that bold handsome man when
he pressed her arm.
CHAPTER XI
Anatole Kurágin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent him away
from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand rubles a year in
cash, besides running up debts for as much more, which his creditors demanded
from his father.
His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for the last
time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as adjutant to the
commander in chief—a post his father had procured for him—and would at last
try to make a good match there. He indicated to him Princess Mary and Julie
Karágina.
Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre’s house.
Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him after a while,
sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and gave him money under
the guise of loans.
As Shinshín had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had turned the
heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that he slighted them and
plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French actresses—with the chief of whom,
Mademoiselle George, he was said to be on intimate relations. He had never
missed a carousal at Danílov’s or other Moscow revelers’, drank whole nights
through, outvying everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the best
society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, and he flirted
with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run after the unmarried girls,
especially the rich heiresses who were most of them plain. There was a special
reason for this, as he had got married two years before—a fact known only to his
most intimate friends. At that time while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish
landowner of small means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole had
very soon abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to send to his
father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass himself off as a bachelor.
Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with others.
He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that it was impossible for him to
live otherwise than as he did and that he had never in his life done anything base.
He was incapable of considering how his actions might affect others or what the
consequences of this or that action of his might be. He was convinced that, as a
duck is so made that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he
must spend thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent
position in society. He believed this so firmly that others, looking at him, were
persuaded of it too and did not refuse him either a leading place in society or
money, which he borrowed from anyone and everyone and evidently would not
repay.
He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning. He was not
vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still less could he be accused
of ambition. More than once he had vexed his father by spoiling his own career,
and he laughed at distinctions of all kinds. He was not mean, and did not refuse
anyone who asked of him. All he cared about was gaiety and women, and as
according to his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in these tastes, and he was
incapable of considering what the gratification of his tastes entailed for others,
he honestly considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues and
bad people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.
Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence similar to
that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of forgiveness.
“All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all will be forgiven him, for
he enjoyed much.”
Dólokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and his
Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling, and dissipation,
associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kurágin and made use of him for his
own ends.
Anatole was sincerely fond of Dólokhov for his cleverness and audacity.
Dólokhov, who needed Anatole Kurágin’s name, position, and connections as a
bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, made use of him and amused
himself at his expense without letting the other feel it. Apart from the advantage
he derived from Anatole, the very process of dominating another’s will was in
itself a pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to Dólokhov.
Natásha had made a strong impression on Kurágin. At supper after the opera
he described to Dólokhov with the air of a connoisseur the attractions of her
arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his intention of making love to her.
Anatole had no notion and was incapable of considering what might come of
such love-making, as he never had any notion of the outcome of any of his
actions.
“She’s first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us,” replied Dólokhov.
“I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner,” said Anatole. “Eh?”
“You’d better wait till she’s married....”
“You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,” pursued Anatole.
“You have been caught once already by a ‘little girl,’” said Dólokhov who
knew of Kurágin’s marriage. “Take care!”
“Well, that can’t happen twice! Eh?” said Anatole, with a good-humored
laugh.
CHAPTER XII
The day after the opera the Rostóvs went nowhere and nobody came to see
them. Márya Dmítrievna talked to the count about something which they
concealed from Natásha. Natásha guessed they were talking about the old prince
and planning something, and this disquieted and offended her. She was expecting
Prince Andrew any moment and twice that day sent a manservant to the
Vozdvízhenka to ascertain whether he had come. He had not arrived. She
suffered more now than during her first days in Moscow. To her impatience and
pining for him were now added the unpleasant recollection of her interview with
Princess Mary and the old prince, and a fear and anxiety of which she did not
understand the cause. She continually fancied that either he would never come or
that something would happen to her before he came. She could no longer think
of him by herself calmly and continuously as she had done before. As soon as
she began to think of him, the recollection of the old prince, of Princess Mary, of
the theater, and of Kurágin mingled with her thoughts. The question again
presented itself whether she was not guilty, whether she had not already broken
faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found herself recalling to the minutest
detail every word, every gesture, and every shade in the play of expression on
the face of the man who had been able to arouse in her such an incomprehensible
and terrifying feeling. To the family Natásha seemed livelier than usual, but she
was far less tranquil and happy than before.
On Sunday morning Márya Dmítrievna invited her visitors to Mass at her
parish church—the Church of the Assumption built over the graves of victims of
the plague.
“I don’t like those fashionable churches,” she said, evidently priding herself
on her independence of thought. “God is the same everywhere. We have an
excellent priest, he conducts the service decently and with dignity, and the
deacon is the same. What holiness is there in giving concerts in the choir? I don’t
like it, it’s just self-indulgence!”
Márya Dmítrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her whole
house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the servants
worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church. At her table there
were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had vodka and roast goose or
suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was the holiday so noticeable as in
Márya Dmítrievna’s broad, stern face, which on that day wore an invariable look
of solemn festivity.
After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room where the
loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a servant announced that the
carriage was ready, and Márya Dmítrievna rose with a stern air. She wore her
holiday shawl, in which she paid calls, and announced that she was going to see
Prince Nicholas Bolkónski to have an explanation with him about Natásha.
After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited on the
Rostóvs, and Natásha, very glad of this diversion, having shut herself into a
room adjoining the drawing room, occupied herself trying on the new dresses.
Just as she had put on a bodice without sleeves and only tacked together, and
was turning her head to see in the glass how the back fitted, she heard in the
drawing room the animated sounds of her father’s voice and another’s—a
woman’s—that made her flush. It was Hélène. Natásha had not time to take off
the bodice before the door opened and Countess Bezúkhova, dressed in a purple
velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with good-humored
amiable smiles.
“Oh, my enchantress!” she cried to the blushing Natásha. “Charming! No, this
is really beyond anything, my dear count,” said she to Count Rostóv who had
followed her in. “How can you live in Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won’t let
you off! Mademoiselle George will recite at my house tonight and there’ll be
some people, and if you don’t bring your lovely girls—who are prettier than
Mademoiselle George—I won’t know you! My husband is away in Tver or I
would send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must! Between
eight and nine.”
She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the looking glass,
draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely. She did not cease chattering
good-naturedly and gaily, continually praising Natásha’s beauty. She looked at
Natásha’s dresses and praised them, as well as a new dress of her own made of
“metallic gauze,” which she had received from Paris, and advised Natásha to
have one like it.
“But anything suits you, my charmer!” she remarked.
A smile of pleasure never left Natásha’s face. She felt happy and as if she
were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess Bezúkhova who had
formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and important and was now so kind
to her. Natásha brightened up and felt almost in love with this woman, who was
so beautiful and so kind. Hélène for her part was sincerely delighted with
Natásha and wished to give her a good time. Anatole had asked her to bring him
and Natásha together, and she was calling on the Rostóvs for that purpose. The
idea of throwing her brother and Natásha together amused her.
Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natásha for
drawing Borís away, she did not think of that now, and in her own way heartily
wished Natásha well. As she was leaving the Rostóvs she called her protégée
aside.
“My brother dined with me yesterday—we nearly died of laughter—he ate
nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly, quite madly, in love
with you, my dear.”
Natásha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
“How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!” said Hélène. “You must
certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a reason to shut
yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your fiancé would wish you to
go into society rather than be bored to death.”
“So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre—that good
Pierre—have talked and laughed about this. So it’s all right.” And again, under
Hélène’s influence, what had seemed terrible now seemed simple and natural.
“And she is such a grande dame, so kind, and evidently likes me so much. And
why not enjoy myself?” thought Natásha, gazing at Hélène with wide-open,
wondering eyes.
Márya Dmítrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having evidently
suffered a defeat at the old prince’s. She was still too agitated by the encounter to
be able to talk of the affair calmly. In answer to the count’s inquiries she replied
that things were all right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of
Countess Bezúkhova’s visit and the invitation for that evening, Márya
Dmítrievna remarked:
“I don’t care to have anything to do with Bezúkhova and don’t advise you to;
however, if you’ve promised—go. It will divert your thoughts,” she added,
addressing Natásha.
CHAPTER XIII
Count Rostóv took the girls to Countess Bezúkhova’s. There were a good
many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natásha. Count Rostóv was
displeased to see that the company consisted almost entirely of men and women
known for the freedom of their conduct. Mademoiselle George was standing in a
corner of the drawing room surrounded by young men. There were several
Frenchmen present, among them Métivier who from the time Hélène reached
Moscow had been an intimate in her house. The count decided not to sit down to
cards or let his girls out of his sight and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle
George’s performance was over.
Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostóvs.
Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natásha and followed her. As
soon as she saw him she was seized by the same feeling she had had at the opera
—gratified vanity at his admiration of her and fear at the absence of a moral
barrier between them.
Hélène welcomed Natásha delightedly and was loud in admiration of her
beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George went out of
the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people began arranging
the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a chair for Natásha and was
about to sit down beside her, but the count, who never lost sight of her, took the
seat himself. Anatole sat down behind her.
Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red shawl
draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for her, and assumed
an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was audible.
Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience and began
reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for her son. In some
places she raised her voice, in others she whispered, lifting her head
triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse sounds, rolling her eyes.
“Adorable! divine! delicious!” was heard from every side.
Natásha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor understood
anything of what went on before her. She only felt herself again completely
borne away into this strange senseless world—so remote from her old world—a
world in which it was impossible to know what was good or bad, reasonable or
senseless. Behind her sat Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she
experienced a frightened sense of expectancy.
After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.
“How beautiful she is!” Natásha remarked to her father who had also risen
and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.
“I don’t think so when I look at you!” said Anatole, following Natásha. He
said this at a moment when she alone could hear him. “You are enchanting...
from the moment I saw you I have never ceased...”
“Come, come, Natásha!” said the count, as he turned back for his daughter.
“How beautiful she is!” Natásha without saying anything stepped up to her
father and looked at him with surprised inquiring eyes.
After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and Countess
Bezúkhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.
The count wished to go home, but Hélène entreated him not to spoil her
improvised ball, and the Rostóvs stayed on. Anatole asked Natásha for a valse
and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her she was
bewitching and that he loved her. During the écossaise, which she also danced
with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be by themselves, but
merely gazed at her. Natásha lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was
such confident tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she could not,
whilst looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her eyes.
“Don’t say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,” she said
rapidly.... She glanced at him.
Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
“Don’t speak to me of that! What can I do?” said he. “I tell you I am madly,
madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are enchanting?... It’s our turn to
begin.”
Natásha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open frightened
eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly anything that went
on that evening. They danced the écossaise and the Grossvater. Her father asked
her to come home, but she begged to remain. Wherever she went and whomever
she was speaking to, she felt his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she
had asked her father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that
Hélène had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother’s love, and that
she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Hélène had disappeared leaving
them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said in a tender voice:
“I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never see you? I love
you madly. Can I never...?” and, blocking her path, he brought his face close to
hers.
His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she saw nothing
but them.
“Natalie?” he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being painfully
pressed. “Natalie?”
“I don’t understand. I have nothing to say,” her eyes replied.
Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she felt herself
released, and Hélène’s footsteps and the rustle of her dress were heard in the
room. Natásha looked round at her, and then, red and trembling, threw a
frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved toward the door.
“One word, just one, for God’s sake!” cried Anatole.
She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to her what
had happened and to which she could find no answer.
“Natalie, just a word, only one!” he kept repeating, evidently not knowing
what to say and he repeated it till Hélène came up to them.
Hélène returned with Natásha to the drawing room. The Rostóvs went away
without staying for supper.
After reaching home Natásha did not sleep all night. She was tormented by the
insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or Prince Andrew. She loved
Prince Andrew—she remembered distinctly how deeply she loved him. But she
also loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. “Else how could all this have
happened?” thought she. “If, after that, I could return his smile when saying
good-by, if I was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the
first. It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not help loving
him. What am I to do if I love him and the other one too?” she asked herself,
unable to find an answer to these terrible questions.
CHAPTER XIV
Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to move
about and talk, dressmakers came again. Márya Dmítrievna appeared, and they
were called to breakfast. Natásha kept looking uneasily at everybody with wide-
open eyes, as if wishing to intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried
to appear the same as usual.
After breakfast, which was her best time, Márya Dmítrievna sat down in her
armchair and called Natásha and the count to her.
“Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is my
advice,” she began. “Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince Bolkónski.
Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to begin shouting, but I am
not one to be shouted down. I said what I had to say!”
“Well, and he?” asked the count.
“He? He’s crazy... he did not want to listen. But what’s the use of talking? As
it is we have worn the poor girl out,” said Márya Dmítrievna. “My advice to you
is finish your business and go back home to Otrádnoe... and wait there.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Natásha.
“Yes, go back,” said Márya Dmítrievna, “and wait there. If your betrothed
comes here now—there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but alone with the old man
he will talk things over and then come on to you.”
Count Rostóv approved of this suggestion, appreciating its reasonableness. If
the old man came round it would be all the better to visit him in Moscow or at
Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding, against his wishes, could only be
arranged at Otrádnoe.
“That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took her,” said
the old count.
“No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But if he won’t
—that’s his affair,” said Márya Dmítrievna, looking for something in her
reticule. “Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there is nothing to wait for; and
what is not ready I’ll send after you. Though I don’t like letting you go, it is the
best way. So go, with God’s blessing!”
Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed it to
Natásha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.
“She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She’s afraid
you might think that she does not like you.”
“But she doesn’t like me,” said Natásha.
“Don’t talk nonsense!” cried Márya Dmítrievna.
“I shan’t believe anyone, I know she doesn’t like me,” replied Natásha boldly
as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold and angry resolution that
caused Márya Dmítrievna to look at her more intently and to frown.
“Don’t answer like that, my good girl!” she said. “What I say is true! Write an
answer!”
Natásha did not reply and went to her own room to read Princess Mary’s
letter.
Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding that had
occurred between them. Whatever her father’s feelings might be, she begged
Natásha to believe that she could not help loving her as the one chosen by her
brother, for whose happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything.
“Do not think, however,” she wrote, “that my father is ill-disposed toward
you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be forgiven; but he is good and
magnanimous and will love her who makes his son happy.” Princess Mary went
on to ask Natásha to fix a time when she could see her again.
After reading the letter Natásha sat down at the writing table to answer it.
“Dear Princess,” she wrote in French quickly and mechanically, and then paused.
What more could she write after all that had happened the evening before? “Yes,
yes! All that has happened, and now all is changed,” she thought as she sat with
the letter she had begun before her. “Must I break off with him? Must I really?
That’s awful...” and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to Sónya
and began sorting patterns with her.
After dinner Natásha went to her room and again took up Princess Mary’s
letter. “Can it be that it is all over?” she thought. “Can it be that all this has
happened so quickly and has destroyed all that went before?” She recalled her
love for Prince Andrew in all its former strength, and at the same time felt that
she loved Kurágin. She vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew’s wife, and the
scenes of happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and
at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of yesterday’s
interview with Anatole.
“Why could that not be as well?” she sometimes asked herself in complete
bewilderment. “Only so could I be completely happy; but now I have to choose,
and I can’t be happy without either of them. Only,” she thought, “to tell Prince
Andrew what has happened or to hide it from him are both equally impossible.
But with that one nothing is spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy
of Prince Andrew’s love, in which I have lived so long?”
“Please, Miss!” whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious air. “A
man told me to give you this—” and she handed Natásha a letter.
“Only, for Christ’s sake...” the girl went on, as Natásha, without thinking,
mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from Anatole, of which,
without taking in a word, she understood only that it was a letter from him—
from the man she loved. Yes, she loved him, or else how could that have
happened which had happened? And how could she have a love letter from him
in her hand?
With trembling hands Natásha held that passionate love letter which Dólokhov
had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she found in it an echo of all that
she herself imagined she was feeling.
“Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you or to
die. There is no other way for me,” the letter began. Then he went on to say that
he knew her parents would not give her to him—for this there were secret
reasons he could reveal only to her—but that if she loved him she need only say
the word yes, and no human power could hinder their bliss. Love would conquer
all. He would steal her away and carry her off to the ends of the earth.
“Yes, yes! I love him!” thought Natásha, reading the letter for the twentieth
time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of it.
That evening Márya Dmítrievna was going to the Akhárovs’ and proposed to
take the girls with her. Natásha, pleading a headache, remained at home.
CHAPTER XV
On returning late in the evening Sónya went to Natásha’s room, and to her
surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open on the table, beside
her lay Anatole’s letter. Sónya picked it up and read it.
As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natásha, trying to find in her face an
explanation of what she was reading, but did not find it. Her face was calm,
gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep herself from choking, Sónya,
pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat down in an armchair and burst
into tears.
“How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she have left off
loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kurágin go to such lengths? He is
a deceiver and a villain, that’s plain! What will Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas,
do when he hears of it? So this is the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural
look the day before yesterday, yesterday, and today,” thought Sónya. “But it
can’t be that she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who
it was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a thing!”
Sónya wiped away her tears and went up to Natásha, again scanning her face.
“Natásha!” she said, just audibly.
Natásha awoke and saw Sónya.
“Ah, you’re back?”
And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment of
awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sónya’s look of
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
“Sónya, you’ve read that letter?” she demanded.
“Yes,” answered Sónya softly.
Natásha smiled rapturously.
“No, Sónya, I can’t any longer!” she said. “I can’t hide it from you any longer.
You know, we love one another! Sónya, darling, he writes... Sónya...”
Sónya stared open-eyed at Natásha, unable to believe her ears.
“And Bolkónski?” she asked.
“Ah, Sónya, if you only knew how happy I am!” cried Natásha. “You don’t
know what love is....”
“But, Natásha, can that be all over?”
Natásha looked at Sónya with wide-open eyes as if she could not grasp the
question.
“Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?” said Sónya.
“Oh, you don’t understand anything! Don’t talk nonsense, just listen!” said
Natásha, with momentary vexation.
“But I can’t believe it,” insisted Sónya. “I don’t understand. How is it you
have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you have only seen him
three times! Natásha, I don’t believe you, you’re joking! In three days to forget
everything and so...”
“Three days?” said Natásha. “It seems to me I’ve loved him a hundred years.
It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can’t understand it....
Sónya, wait a bit, sit here,” and Natásha embraced and kissed her.
“I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it too, but it’s
only now that I feel such love. It’s not the same as before. As soon as I saw him I
felt he was my master and I his slave, and that I could not help loving him. Yes,
his slave! Whatever he orders I shall do. You don’t understand that. What can I
do? What can I do, Sónya?” cried Natásha with a happy yet frightened
expression.
“But think what you are doing,” cried Sónya. “I can’t leave it like this. This
secret correspondence... How could you let him go so far?” she went on, with a
horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.
“I told you that I have no will,” Natásha replied. “Why can’t you understand?
I love him!”
“Then I won’t let it come to that... I shall tell!” cried Sónya, bursting into
tears.
“What do you mean? For God’s sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!”
declared Natásha. “You want me to be miserable, you want us to be separated....”
When she saw Natásha’s fright, Sónya shed tears of shame and pity for her
friend.
“But what has happened between you?” she asked. “What has he said to you?
Why doesn’t he come to the house?”
Natásha did not answer her questions.
“For God’s sake, Sónya, don’t tell anyone, don’t torture me,” Natásha
entreated. “Remember no one ought to interfere in such matters! I have confided
in you....”
“But why this secrecy? Why doesn’t he come to the house?” asked Sónya.
“Why doesn’t he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince Andrew gave you
complete freedom—if it is really so; but I don’t believe it! Natásha, have you
considered what these secret reasons can be?”
Natásha looked at Sónya with astonishment. Evidently this question presented
itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know how to answer it.
“I don’t know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!”
Sónya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
“If there were reasons...” she began.
But Natásha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.
“Sónya, one can’t doubt him! One can’t, one can’t! Don’t you understand?”
she cried.
“Does he love you?”
“Does he love me?” Natásha repeated with a smile of pity at her friend’s lack
of comprehension. “Why, you have read his letter and you have seen him.”
“But if he is dishonorable?”
“He! dishonorable? If you only knew!” exclaimed Natásha.
“If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions or cease
seeing you; and if you won’t do this, I will. I will write to him, and I will tell
Papa!” said Sónya resolutely.
“But I can’t live without him!” cried Natásha.
“Natásha, I don’t understand you. And what are you saying! Think of your
father and of Nicholas.”
“I don’t want anyone, I don’t love anyone but him. How dare you say he is
dishonorable? Don’t you know that I love him?” screamed Natásha. “Go away,
Sónya! I don’t want to quarrel with you, but go, for God’s sake go! You see how
I am suffering!” Natásha cried angrily, in a voice of despair and repressed
irritation. Sónya burst into sobs and ran from the room.
Natásha went to the table and without a moment’s reflection wrote that answer
to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all the morning. In this
letter she said briefly that all their misunderstandings were at an end; that
availing herself of the magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad
had given her her freedom, she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and
forgive her if she had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his
wife. At that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natásha.
On Friday the Rostóvs were to return to the country, but on Wednesday the
count went with the prospective purchaser to his estate near Moscow.
On the day the count left, Sónya and Natásha were invited to a big dinner
party at the Karágins’, and Márya Dmítrievna took them there. At that party
Natásha again met Anatole, and Sónya noticed that she spoke to him, trying not
to be overheard, and that all through dinner she was more agitated than ever.
When they got home Natásha was the first to begin the explanation Sónya
expected.
“There, Sónya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,” Natásha
began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to be praised. “We
have had an explanation today.”
“Well, what happened? What did he say? Natásha, how glad I am you’re not
angry with me! Tell me everything—the whole truth. What did he say?”
Natásha became thoughtful.
“Oh, Sónya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I had
promised Bolkónski. He was glad I was free to refuse him.”
Sónya sighed sorrowfully.
“But you haven’t refused Bolkónski?” said she.
“Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkónski. Why do you
think so badly of me?”
“I don’t think anything, only I don’t understand this...”
“Wait a bit, Sónya, you’ll understand everything. You’ll see what a man he is!
Now don’t think badly of me or of him. I don’t think badly of anyone: I love and
pity everybody. But what am I to do?”
Sónya did not succumb to the tender tone Natásha used toward her. The more
emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natásha’s face became, the more
serious and stern grew Sónya’s.
“Natásha,” said she, “you asked me not to speak to you, and I haven’t spoken,
but now you yourself have begun. I don’t trust him, Natásha. Why this secrecy?”
“Again, again!” interrupted Natásha.
“Natásha, I am afraid for you!”
“Afraid of what?”
“I am afraid you’re going to your ruin,” said Sónya resolutely, and was herself
horrified at what she had said.
Anger again showed in Natásha’s face.
“And I’ll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It’s not your business! It
won’t be you, but I, who’ll suffer. Leave me alone, leave me alone! I hate you!”
“Natásha!” moaned Sónya, aghast.
“I hate you, I hate you! You’re my enemy forever!” And Natásha ran out of
the room.
Natásha did not speak to Sónya again and avoided her. With the same
expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the house, taking up now
one occupation, now another, and at once abandoning them.
Hard as it was for Sónya, she watched her friend and did not let her out of her
sight.
The day before the count was to return, Sónya noticed that Natásha sat by the
drawing room window all the morning as if expecting something and that she
made a sign to an officer who drove past, whom Sónya took to be Anatole.
Sónya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed that at
dinner and all that evening Natásha was in a strange and unnatural state. She
answered questions at random, began sentences she did not finish, and laughed
at everything.
After tea Sónya noticed a housemaid at Natásha’s door timidly waiting to let
her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at the door learned that another
letter had been delivered.
Then suddenly it became clear to Sónya that Natásha had some dreadful plan
for that evening. Sónya knocked at her door. Natásha did not let her in.
“She will run away with him!” thought Sónya. “She is capable of anything.
There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in her face today. She
cried as she said good-by to Uncle,” Sónya remembered. “Yes, that’s it, she
means to elope with him, but what am I to do?” thought she, recalling all the
signs that clearly indicated that Natásha had some terrible intention. “The count
is away. What am I to do? Write to Kurágin demanding an explanation? But
what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me
to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she really has already refused
Bolkónski—she sent a letter to Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away....”
To tell Márya Dmítrievna who had such faith in Natásha seemed to Sónya
terrible. “Well, anyway,” thought Sónya as she stood in the dark passage, “now
or never I must prove that I remember the family’s goodness to me and that I
love Nicholas. Yes! If I don’t sleep for three nights I’ll not leave this passage and
will hold her back by force and will and not let the family be disgraced,” thought
she.
CHAPTER XVI
Anatole had lately moved to Dólokhov’s. The plan for Natalie Rostóva’s
abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by Dólokhov a few days
before, and on the day that Sónya, after listening at Natásha’s door, resolved to
safeguard her, it was to have been put into execution. Natásha had promised to
come out to Kurágin at the back porch at ten that evening. Kurágin was to put
her into a troyka he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village
of Kámenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a marriage
ceremony over them. At Kámenka a relay of horses was to wait which would
take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they would hasten abroad
with post horses.
Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand rubles he had
taken from his sister and another ten thousand borrowed with Dólokhov’s help.
Two witnesses for the mock marriage—Khvóstikov, a retired petty official
whom Dólokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and Makárin, a
retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded affection for
Kurágin—were sitting at tea in Dólokhov’s front room.
In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with Persian
rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dólokhov in a traveling cloak and high boots,
at an open desk on which lay an abacus and some bundles of paper money.
Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to and fro from the room where the
witnesses were sitting, through the study to the room behind, where his French
valet and others were packing the last of his things. Dólokhov was counting the
money and noting something down.
“Well,” he said, “Khvóstikov must have two thousand.”
“Give it to him, then,” said Anatole.
“Makárka” (their name for Makárin) “will go through fire and water for you
for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled,” said Dólokhov, showing him
the memorandum. “Is that right?”
“Yes, of course,” returned Anatole, evidently not listening to Dólokhov and
looking straight before him with a smile that did not leave his face.
Dólokhov banged down the lid of his desk and turned to Anatole with an
ironic smile:
“Do you know? You’d really better drop it all. There’s still time!”
“Fool,” retorted Anatole. “Don’t talk nonsense! If you only knew... it’s the
devil knows what!”
“No, really, give it up!” said Dólokhov. “I am speaking seriously. It’s no joke,
this plot you’ve hatched.”
“What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?” said Anatole, making a grimace.
“Really it’s no time for your stupid jokes,” and he left the room.
Dólokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole had
gone out.
“You wait a bit,” he called after him. “I’m not joking, I’m talking sense. Come
here, come here!”
Anatole returned and looked at Dólokhov, trying to give him his attention and
evidently submitting to him involuntarily.
“Now listen to me. I’m telling you this for the last time. Why should I joke
about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything for you? Who found the
priest and got the passport? Who raised the money? I did it all.”
“Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?” And Anatole sighed
and embraced Dólokhov.
“I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a dangerous
business, and if you think about it—a stupid business. Well, you’ll carry her off
—all right! Will they let it stop at that? It will come out that you’re already
married. Why, they’ll have you in the criminal court....”
“Oh, nonsense, nonsense!” Anatole ejaculated and again made a grimace.
“Didn’t I explain to you? What?” And Anatole, with the partiality dull-witted
people have for any conclusion they have reached by their own reasoning,
repeated the argument he had already put to Dólokhov a hundred times. “Didn’t I
explain to you that I have come to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid,” he
went on, crooking one finger, “then I have nothing to answer for; but if it is
valid, no matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it. Isn’t that so? And
don’t talk to me, don’t, don’t.”
“Seriously, you’d better drop it! You’ll only get yourself into a mess!”
“Go to the devil!” cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the room, but
returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of Dólokhov with his feet
turned under him. “It’s the very devil! What? Feel how it beats!” He took
Dólokhov’s hand and put it on his heart. “What a foot, my dear fellow! What a
glance! A goddess!” he added in French. “What?”
Dólokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes looked
at him—evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of him.
“Well and when the money’s gone, what then?”
“What then? Eh?” repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a thought of the
future. “What then?... Then, I don’t know.... But why talk nonsense!” He glanced
at his watch. “It’s time!”
Anatole went into the back room.
“Now then! Nearly ready? You’re dawdling!” he shouted to the servants.
Dólokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to bring
something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went into the room
where Khvóstikov and Makárin were sitting.
Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and smiling
pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to himself.
“Come and eat something. Have a drink!” Dólokhov shouted to him from the
other room.
“I don’t want to,” answered Anatole continuing to smile.
“Come! Balagá is here.”
Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balagá was a famous troyka
driver who had known Dólokhov and Anatole some six years and had given
them good service with his troykas. More than once when Anatole’s regiment
was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in the evening, brought him to
Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back again the next night. More than once
he had enabled Dólokhov to escape when pursued. More than once he had driven
them through the town with gypsies and “ladykins” as he called the cocottes.
More than once in their service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles in
the streets of Moscow and had always been protected from the consequences by
“my gentlemen” as he called them. He had ruined more than one horse in their
service. More than once they had beaten him, and more than once they had made
him drunk on champagne and Madeira, which he loved; and he knew more than
one thing about each of them which would long ago have sent an ordinary man
to Siberia. They often called Balagá into their orgies and made him drink and
dance at the gypsies’, and more than one thousand rubles of their money had
passed through his hands. In their service he risked his skin and his life twenty
times a year, and in their service had lost more horses than the money he had
from them would buy. But he liked them; liked that mad driving at twelve miles
an hour, liked upsetting a driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full
gallop through the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy shouts
behind him: “Get on! Get on!” when it was impossible to go any faster. He liked
giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant who, more dead than alive,
was already hurrying out of his way. “Real gentlemen!” he considered them.
Anatole and Dólokhov liked Balagá too for his masterly driving and because
he liked the things they liked. With others Balagá bargained, charging twenty-
five rubles for a two hours’ drive, and rarely drove himself, generally letting his
young men do so. But with “his gentlemen” he always drove himself and never
demanded anything for his work. Only a couple of times a year—when he knew
from their valets that they had money in hand—he would turn up of a morning
quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help him. The gentlemen
always made him sit down.
“Do help me out, Theodore Iványch, sir,” or “your excellency,” he would say.
“I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go to the fair.”
And Anatole and Dólokhov, when they had money, would give him a
thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.
Balagá was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about twenty-
seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck, glittering little eyes, and a
small beard. He wore a fine, dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin.
On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the front corner
of the room, and went up to Dólokhov, holding out a small, black hand.
“Theodore Iványch!” he said, bowing.
“How d’you do, friend? Well, here he is!”
“Good day, your excellency!” he said, again holding out his hand to Anatole
who had just come in.
“I say, Balagá,” said Anatole, putting his hands on the man’s shoulders, “do
you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service.... What horses have you
come with? Eh?”
“As your messenger ordered, your special beasts,” replied Balagá.
“Well, listen, Balagá! Drive all three to death but get me there in three hours.
Eh?”
“When they are dead, what shall I drive?” said Balagá with a wink.
“Mind, I’ll smash your face in! Don’t make jokes!” cried Anatole, suddenly
rolling his eyes.
“Why joke?” said the driver, laughing. “As if I’d grudge my gentlemen
anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast we’ll go!”
“Ah!” said Anatole. “Well, sit down.”
“Yes, sit down!” said Dólokhov.
“I’ll stand, Theodore Iványch.”
“Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!” said Anatole, and filled a large glass of
Madeira for him.
The driver’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After refusing it for
manners’ sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with a red silk handkerchief he
took out of his cap.
“And when are we to start, your excellency?”
“Well...” Anatole looked at his watch. “We’ll start at once. Mind, Balagá!
You’ll get there in time? Eh?”
“That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn’t we be there in
time?” replied Balagá. “Didn’t we get you to Tver in seven hours? I think you
remember that, your excellency?”
“Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver,” said Anatole, smilingly at
the recollection and turning to Makárin who gazed rapturously at him with wide-
open eyes. “Will you believe it, Makárka, it took one’s breath away, the rate we
flew. We came across a train of loaded sleighs and drove right over two of them.
Eh?”
“Those were horses!” Balagá continued the tale. “That time I’d harnessed two
young side horses with the bay in the shafts,” he went on, turning to Dólokhov.
“Will you believe it, Theodore Iványch, those animals flew forty miles? I
couldn’t hold them in, my hands grew numb in the sharp frost so that I threw
down the reins—‘Catch hold yourself, your excellency!’ says I, and I just
tumbled on the bottom of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn’t a case of
urging them on, there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The
devils took us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it.”
CHAPTER XVII
Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later wearing a fur
coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily set on one side and very
becoming to his handsome face. Having looked in a mirror, and standing before
Dólokhov in the same pose he had assumed before it, he lifted a glass of wine.
“Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!” said
Anatole. “Well, comrades and friends...” he considered for a moment “... of my
youth, farewell!” he said, turning to Makárin and the others.
Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to make
something touching and solemn out of this address to his comrades. He spoke
slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest slightly swayed one leg.
“All take glasses; you too, Balagá. Well, comrades and friends of my youth,
we’ve had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when shall we meet
again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time—now farewell, lads! To our
health! Hurrah!...” he cried, and emptying his glass flung it on the floor.
“To your health!” said Balagá who also emptied his glass, and wiped his
mouth with his handkerchief.
Makárin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.
“Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!
“Let’s go. Let’s go!” cried Anatole.
Balagá was about to leave the room.
“No, stop!” said Anatole. “Shut the door; we have first to sit down. That’s the
way.”
They shut the door and all sat down.
“Now, quick march, lads!” said Anatole, rising.
Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all went out
into the vestibule.
“And where’s the fur cloak?” asked Dólokhov. “Hey, Ignátka! Go to Matrëna
Matrévna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what elopements are
like,” continued Dólokhov with a wink. “Why, she’ll rush out more dead than
alive just in the things she is wearing; if you delay at all there’ll be tears and
‘Papa’ and ‘Mamma,’ and she’s frozen in a minute and must go back—but you
wrap the fur cloak round her first thing and carry her to the sleigh.”
The valet brought a woman’s fox-lined cloak.
“Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrëna, the sable!” he shouted so that
his voice rang far through the rooms.
A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black eyes and
curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a sable mantle on her
arm.
“Here, I don’t grudge it—take it!” she said, evidently afraid of her master and
yet regretful of her cloak.
Dólokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over Matrëna, and
wrapped her up in it.
“That’s the way,” said Dólokhov, “and then so!” and he turned the collar up
round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered. “And then so, do you
see?” and he pushed Anatole’s head forward to meet the gap left by the collar,
through which Matrëna’s brilliant smile was seen.
“Well, good-by, Matrëna,” said Anatole, kissing her. “Ah, my revels here are
over. Remember me to Stëshka. There, good-by! Good-by, Matrëna, wish me
luck!”
“Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!” said Matrëna in her gypsy
accent.
Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers were
holding the horses. Balagá took his seat in the front one and holding his elbows
high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and Dólokhov got in with him.
Makárin, Khvóstikov, and a valet seated themselves in the other sleigh.
“Well, are you ready?” asked Balagá.
“Go!” he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka tore down
the Nikítski Boulevard.
“Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!...” The shouting of Balagá and of
the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be heard. On the
Arbát Square the troyka caught against a carriage; something cracked, shouts
were heard, and the troyka flew along the Arbát Street.
After taking a turn along the Podnovínski Boulevard, Balagá began to rein in,
and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old Konyúsheny Street.
The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and Anatole and
Dólokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the gate Dólokhov
whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant ran out.
“Come into the courtyard or you’ll be seen; she’ll come out directly,” said she.
Dólokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the courtyard,
turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.
He was met by Gabriel, Márya Dmítrievna’s gigantic footman.
“Come to the mistress, please,” said the footman in his deep bass, intercepting
any retreat.
“To what Mistress? Who are you?” asked Anatole in a breathless whisper.
“Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in.”
“Kurágin! Come back!” shouted Dólokhov. “Betrayed! Back!”
Dólokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and was
struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With a last desperate
effort Dólokhov pushed the porter aside, and when Anatole ran back seized him
by the arm, pulled him through the wicket, and ran back with him to the troyka.
CHAPTER XVIII
Márya Dmítrievna, having found Sónya weeping in the corridor, made her
confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natásha she read it and went into
Natásha’s room with it in her hand.
“You shameless good-for-nothing!” said she. “I won’t hear a word.”
Pushing back Natásha who looked at her with astonished but tearless eyes, she
locked her in; and having given orders to the yard porter to admit the persons
who would be coming that evening, but not to let them out again, and having
told the footman to bring them up to her, she seated herself in the drawing room
to await the abductors.
When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run away
again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced through the
rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward midnight she went to
Natásha’s room fingering the key in her pocket. Sónya was sitting sobbing in the
corridor. “Márya Dmítrievna, for God’s sake let me in to her!” she pleaded, but
Márya Dmítrievna unlocked the door and went in without giving her an
answer.... “Disgusting, abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I’m only
sorry for her father!” thought she, trying to restrain her wrath. “Hard as it may
be, I’ll tell them all to hold their tongues and will hide it from the count.” She
entered the room with resolute steps. Natásha lying on the sofa, her head hidden
in her hands, and she did not stir. She was in just the same position in which
Márya Dmítrievna had left her.
“A nice girl! Very nice!” said Márya Dmítrievna. “Arranging meetings with
lovers in my house! It’s no use pretending: you listen when I speak to you!” And
Márya Dmítrievna touched her arm. “Listen when I speak! You’ve disgraced
yourself like the lowest of hussies. I’d treat you differently, but I’m sorry for
your father, so I will conceal it.”
Natásha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved with
noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Márya Dmítrievna glanced round
at Sónya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natásha.
“It’s lucky for him that he escaped me; but I’ll find him!” she said in her
rough voice. “Do you hear what I am saying or not?” she added.
She put her large hand under Natásha’s face and turned it toward her. Both
Márya Dmítrievna and Sónya were amazed when they saw how Natásha looked.
Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed, her cheeks sunken.
“Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!” she muttered, wrenching herself
from Márya Dmítrievna’s hands with a vicious effort and sinking down again
into her former position.
“Natalie!” said Márya Dmítrievna. “I wish for your good. Lie still, stay like
that then, I won’t touch you. But listen. I won’t tell you how guilty you are. You
know that yourself. But when your father comes back tomorrow what am I to tell
him? Eh?”
Again Natásha’s body shook with sobs.
“Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?”
“I have no betrothed: I have refused him!” cried Natásha.
“That’s all the same,” continued Márya Dmítrievna. “If they hear of this, will
they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he challenges him to a duel will
that be all right? Eh?”
“Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who asked you
to?” shouted Natásha, raising herself on the sofa and looking malignantly at
Márya Dmítrievna.
“But what did you want?” cried Márya Dmítrievna, growing angry again.
“Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to the house?
Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing girl?... Well, if he had
carried you off... do you think they wouldn’t have found him? Your father, or
brother, or your betrothed? And he’s a scoundrel, a wretch—that’s a fact!”
“He is better than any of you!” exclaimed Natásha getting up. “If you hadn’t
interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it? Sónya, why?... Go away!”
And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which people
bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. Márya Dmítrievna
was to speak again but Natásha cried out:
“Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!” and she threw herself
back on the sofa.
Márya Dmítrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on her
that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that nobody would know
anything about it if only Natásha herself would undertake to forget it all and not
let anyone see that something had happened. Natásha did not reply, nor did she
sob any longer, but she grew cold and had a shivering fit. Márya Dmítrievna put
a pillow under her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her
some lime-flower water, but Natásha did not respond to her.
“Well, let her sleep,” said Márya Dmítrievna as she went out of the room
supposing Natásha to be asleep.
But Natásha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open eyes she
looked straight before her. All that night she did not sleep or weep and did not
speak to Sónya who got up and went to her several times.
Next day Count Rostóv returned from his estate near Moscow in time for
lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the affair with the
purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was nothing to keep him any
longer in Moscow, away from the countess whom he missed. Márya Dmítrievna
met him and told him that Natásha had been very unwell the day before and that
they had sent for the doctor, but that she was better now. Natásha had not left her
room that morning. With compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she
sat at the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past and hurriedly
glancing round at anyone who entered the room. She was evidently expecting
news of him and that he would come or would write to her.
When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the sound of a
man’s footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and malevolent expression.
She did not even get up to greet him. “What is the matter with you, my angel?
Are you ill?” asked the count.
After a moment’s silence Natásha answered: “Yes, ill.”
In reply to the count’s anxious inquiries as to why she was so dejected and
whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she assured him that nothing
had happened and asked him not to worry. Márya Dmítrievna confirmed
Natásha’s assurances that nothing had happened. From the pretense of illness,
from his daughter’s distress, and by the embarrassed faces of Sónya and Márya
Dmítrievna, the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during his
absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that anything disgraceful had
happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his own cheerful tranquillity,
that he avoided inquiries and tried to assure himself that nothing particularly had
happened; and he was only dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their return
to the country.
CHAPTER XIX
From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to go
away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostóvs came to
Moscow the effect Natásha had on him made him hasten to carry out his
intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexéevich’s widow, who had long
since promised to hand over to him some papers of her deceased husband’s.
When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Márya
Dmítrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great importance
relating to Andrew Bolkónski and his betrothed. Pierre had been avoiding
Natásha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her was stronger than a
married man’s should be for his friend’s fiancée. Yet some fate constantly threw
them together.
“What can have happened? And what can they want with me?” thought he as
he dressed to go to Márya Dmítrievna’s. “If only Prince Andrew would hurry up
and come and marry her!” thought he on his way to the house.
On the Tverskóy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.
“Pierre! Been back long?” someone shouted. Pierre raised his head. In a sleigh
drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering the dashboard with
snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makárin dashed past. Anatole was
sitting upright in the classic pose of military dandies, the lower part of his face
hidden by his beaver collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and
rosy, his white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded
hair besprinkled with powdery snow.
“Yes, indeed, that’s a true sage,” thought Pierre. “He sees nothing beyond the
pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so he is always cheerful,
satisfied, and serene. What wouldn’t I give to be like him!” he thought
enviously.
In Márya Dmítrievna’s anteroom the footman who helped him off with his fur
coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.
When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natásha sitting at the window,
with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at him, frowned, and left
the room with an expression of cold dignity.
“What has happened?” asked Pierre, entering Márya Dmítrievna’s room.
“Fine doings!” answered Dmítrievna. “For fifty-eight years have I lived in this
world and never known anything so disgraceful!”
And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him, Márya
Dmítrievna informed him that Natásha had refused Prince Andrew without her
parents’ knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole Kurágin into whose
society Pierre’s wife had thrown her and with whom Natásha had tried to elope
during her father’s absence, in order to be married secretly.
Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was told him,
scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince Andrew’s deeply loved
affianced wife—the same Natásha Rostóva who used to be so charming—should
give up Bolkónski for that fool Anatole who was already secretly married (as
Pierre knew), and should be so in love with him as to agree to run away with
him, was something Pierre could not conceive and could not imagine.
He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natásha, whom he
had known from a child, with this new conception of her baseness, folly, and
cruelty. He thought of his wife. “They are all alike!” he said to himself,
reflecting that he was not the only man unfortunate enough to be tied to a bad
woman. But still he pitied Prince Andrew to the point of tears and sympathized
with his wounded pride, and the more he pitied his friend the more did he think
with contempt and even with disgust of that Natásha who had just passed him in
the ballroom with such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that Natásha’s
soul was overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was not
her fault that her face happened to assume an expression of calm dignity and
severity.
“But how get married?” said Pierre, in answer to Márya Dmítrievna. “He
could not marry—he is married!”
“Things get worse from hour to hour!” ejaculated Márya Dmítrievna. “A nice
youth! What a scoundrel! And she’s expecting him—expecting him since
yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won’t go on expecting him.”
After hearing the details of Anatole’s marriage from Pierre, and giving vent to
her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Márya Dmítrievna told Pierre why
she had sent for him. She was afraid that the count or Bolkónski, who might
arrive at any moment, if they knew of this affair (which she hoped to hide from
them) might challenge Anatole to a duel, and she therefore asked Pierre to tell
his brother-in-law in her name to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set eyes
on him again. Pierre—only now realizing the danger to the old count, Nicholas,
and Prince Andrew—promised to do as she wished. Having briefly and exactly
explained her wishes to him, she let him go to the drawing room.
“Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing either,” she
said. “And I will go and tell her it is no use expecting him! And stay to dinner if
you care to!” she called after Pierre.
Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning
Natásha had told him that she had rejected Bolkónski.
“Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!” he said to Pierre. “What troubles one
has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret having come here.... I
will be frank with you. Have you heard she has broken off her engagement
without consulting anybody? It’s true this engagement never was much to my
liking. Of course he is an excellent man, but still, with his father’s disapproval
they wouldn’t have been happy, and Natásha won’t lack suitors. Still, it has been
going on so long, and to take such a step without father’s or mother’s consent!
And now she’s ill, and God knows what! It’s hard, Count, hard to manage
daughters in their mother’s absence....”
Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the subject, but
the count returned to his troubles.
Sónya entered the room with an agitated face.
“Natásha is not quite well; she’s in her room and would like to see you. Márya
Dmítrievna is with her and she too asks you to come.”
“Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkónski’s, no doubt she wants to send him a
message,” said the count. “Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it all was!”
And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the room.
When Márya Dmítrievna told Natásha that Anatole was married, Natásha did
not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by Pierre himself.
Sónya told Pierre this as she led him along the corridor to Natásha’s room.
Natásha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Márya Dmítrievna, and her eyes,
glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look the moment he entered.
She did not smile or nod, but only gazed fixedly at him, and her look asked only
one thing: was he a friend, or like the others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As
for Pierre, he evidently did not exist for her.
“He knows all about it,” said Márya Dmítrievna pointing to Pierre and
addressing Natásha. “Let him tell you whether I have told the truth.”
Natásha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded animal looks
at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.
“Natálya Ilyníchna,” Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a feeling of pity for
her and loathing for the thing he had to do, “whether it is true or not should make
no difference to you, because...”
“Then it is not true that he’s married!”
“Yes, it is true.”
“Has he been married long?” she asked. “On your honor?...”
Pierre gave his word of honor.
“Is he still here?” she asked, quickly.
“Yes, I have just seen him.”
She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands that they
should leave her alone.
CHAPTER XX
Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at once. He
drove through the town seeking Anatole Kurágin, at the thought of whom now
the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a difficulty in breathing. He was not at
the ice hills, nor at the gypsies’, nor at Komoneno’s. Pierre drove to the Club. In
the Club all was going on as usual. The members who were assembling for
dinner were sitting about in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town
news. The footman having greeted him, knowing his habits and his
acquaintances, told him there was a place left for him in the small dining room
and that Prince Michael Zakhárych was in the library, but Paul Timoféevich had
not yet arrived. One of Pierre’s acquaintances, while they were talking about the
weather, asked if he had heard of Kurágin’s abduction of Rostóva which was
talked of in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and said it was nonsense
for he had just come from the Rostóvs’. He asked everyone about Anatole. One
man told him he had not come yet, and another that he was coming to dinner.
Pierre felt it strange to see this calm, indifferent crowd of people unaware of
what was going on in his soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till
everyone had come, and as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but
drove home.
Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with Dólokhov,
consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate affair. It seemed to him
essential to see Natásha. In the evening he drove to his sister’s to discuss with
her how to arrange a meeting. When Pierre returned home after vainly hunting
all over Moscow, his valet informed him that Prince Anatole was with the
countess. The countess’ drawing room was full of guests.
Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his return—at
that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever—entered the drawing
room and seeing Anatole went up to him.
“Ah, Pierre,” said the countess going up to her husband. “You don’t know
what a plight our Anatole...”
She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband’s head, in his
glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of that rage and
strength which she knew and had herself experienced after his duel with
Dólokhov.
“Where you are, there is vice and evil!” said Pierre to his wife. “Anatole,
come with me! I must speak to you,” he added in French.
Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready to follow
Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward himself and was leading
him from the room.
“If you allow yourself in my drawing room...” whispered Hélène, but Pierre
did not reply and went out of the room.
Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face betrayed anxiety.
Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed Anatole
without looking at him.
“You promised Countess Rostóva to marry her and were about to elope with
her, is that so?”
“Mon cher,” answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in French), “I
don’t consider myself bound to answer questions put to me in that tone.”
Pierre’s face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized Anatole by the
collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him from side to side till
Anatole’s face showed a sufficient degree of terror.
“When I tell you that I must talk to you!...” repeated Pierre.
“Come now, this is stupid. What?” said Anatole, fingering a button of his
collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.
“You’re a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don’t know what deprives me
from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!” said Pierre, expressing
himself so artificially because he was talking French.
He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once put it back
in its place.
“Did you promise to marry her?”
“I... I didn’t think of it. I never promised, because...”
Pierre interrupted him.
“Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?” he said, moving toward Anatole.
Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his pocket and
drew out his pocketbook.
Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table that stood
in his way, threw himself on the sofa.
“I shan’t be violent, don’t be afraid!” said Pierre in answer to a frightened
gesture of Anatole’s. “First, the letters,” said he, as if repeating a lesson to
himself. “Secondly,” he continued after a short pause, again rising and again
pacing the room, “tomorrow you must get out of Moscow.”
“But how can I?...”
“Thirdly,” Pierre continued without listening to him, “you must never breathe
a word of what has passed between you and Countess Rostóva. I know I can’t
prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of conscience...” Pierre paced the
room several times in silence.
Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.
“After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there is such a thing
as other people’s happiness and peace, and that you are ruining a whole life for
the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse yourself with women like my wife—with
them you are within your rights, for they know what you want of them. They are
armed against you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid
to marry her... to deceive, to kidnap.... Don’t you understand that it is as mean as
beating an old man or a child?...”
Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with a
questioning look.
“I don’t know about that, eh?” said Anatole, growing more confident as Pierre
mastered his wrath. “I don’t know that and don’t want to,” he said, not looking at
Pierre and with a slight tremor of his lower jaw, “but you have used such words
to me—‘mean’ and so on—which as a man of honor I can’t allow anyone to
use.”
Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he wanted.
“Though it was tête-à-tête,” Anatole continued, “still I can’t...”
“Is it satisfaction you want?” said Pierre ironically.
“You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do as you
wish, eh?”
“I take them back, I take them back!” said Pierre, “and I ask you to forgive
me.” Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. “And if you require money
for your journey...”
Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile, which Pierre
knew so well in his wife, revolted him.
“Oh, vile and heartless brood!” he exclaimed, and left the room.
Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.
CHAPTER XXI
Pierre drove to Márya Dmítrievna’s to tell her of the fulfillment of her wish
that Kurágin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house was in a state
of alarm and commotion. Natásha was very ill, having, as Márya Dmítrievna
told him in secret, poisoned herself the night after she had been told that Anatole
was married, with some arsenic she had stealthily procured. After swallowing a
little she had been so frightened that she woke Sónya and told her what she had
done. The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was now
out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the question to move her to
the country, and so the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw the distracted
count, and Sónya, who had a tear-stained face, but he could not see Natásha.
Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip about the
attempted abduction of Rostóva. He resolutely denied these rumors, assuring
everyone that nothing had happened except that his brother-in-law had proposed
to her and been refused. It seemed to Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the
whole affair and re-establish Natásha’s reputation.
He was awaiting Prince Andrew’s return with dread and went every day to the
old prince’s for news of him.
Old Prince Bolkónski heard all the rumors current in the town from
Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
Natásha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits than usual
and awaited his son with great impatience.
Some days after Anatole’s departure Pierre received a note from Prince
Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come to see him.
As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his father
Natásha’s note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement (Mademoiselle
Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and given it to the old prince),
and he heard from him the story of Natásha’s elopement, with additions.
Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see him next
morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost the same state as
Natásha and was therefore surprised on entering the drawing room to hear him in
the study talking in a loud animated voice about some intrigue going on in
Petersburg. The old prince’s voice and another now and then interrupted him.
Princess Mary came out to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of
the room where Prince Andrew was, evidently intending to express her
sympathy with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both at
what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news of Natásha’s
faithlessness.
“He says he expected it,” she remarked. “I know his pride will not let him
express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far better, than I expected.
Evidently it had to be....”
“But is it possible that all is really ended?” asked Pierre.
Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not understand how
he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the study. Prince Andrew, greatly
changed and plainly in better health, but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle between
his brows, stood in civilian dress facing his father and Prince Meshchérski,
warmly disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about
Speránski—the news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had just
reached Moscow.
“Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about him a
month ago,” Prince Andrew was saying, “and by those who were unable to
understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and to throw on him all
the blame of other men’s mistakes is very easy, but I maintain that if anything
good has been accomplished in this reign it was done by him, by him alone.”
He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and immediately assumed a
vindictive expression.
“Posterity will do him justice,” he concluded, and at once turned to Pierre.
“Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?” he said with animation, but the new
wrinkle on his forehead deepened. “Yes, I am well,” he said in answer to Pierre’s
question, and smiled.
To Pierre that smile said plainly: “I am well, but my health is now of no use to
anyone.”
After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish frontier,
about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, and about M.
Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his son’s tutor, Prince
Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation about Speránski which was still
going on between the two old men.
“If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon, they would
have been made public,” he said with warmth and haste. “I do not, and never
did, like Speránski personally, but I like justice!”
Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only too
familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous matters in order
to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too intimate. When Prince
Meshchérski had left, Prince Andrew took Pierre’s arm and asked him into the
room that had been assigned him. A bed had been made up there, and some open
portmanteaus and trunks stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took out a
small casket, from which he drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all
silently and very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and
his lips compressed.
“Forgive me for troubling you....”
Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natásha, and his broad
face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated Prince Andrew, and
in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he continued:
“I have received a refusal from Countess Rostóva and have heard reports of
your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of that kind. Is that
true?”
“Both true and untrue,” Pierre began; but Prince Andrew interrupted him.
“Here are her letters and her portrait,” said he.
He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.
“Give this to the countess... if you see her.”
“She is very ill,” said Pierre.
“Then she is here still?” said Prince Andrew. “And Prince Kurágin?” he added
quickly.
“He left long ago. She has been at death’s door.”
“I much regret her illness,” said Prince Andrew; and he smiled like his father,
coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.
“So Monsieur Kurágin has not honored Countess Rostóva with his hand?”
said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.
“He could not marry, for he was married already,” said Pierre.
Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his father.
“And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?” he said.
“He has gone to Peters... But I don’t know,” said Pierre.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said Prince Andrew. “Tell Countess Rostóva that she
was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all that is good.”
Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember whether he
had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre would say anything,
looked fixedly at him.
“I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?” asked Pierre,
“about...”
“Yes,” returned Prince Andrew hastily. “I said that a fallen woman should be
forgiven, but I didn’t say I could forgive her. I can’t.”
“But can this be compared...?” said Pierre.
Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: “Yes, ask her hand again, be
magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very noble, but I am unable to
follow in that gentleman’s footsteps. If you wish to be my friend never speak to
me of that... of all that! Well, good-by. So you’ll give her the packet?”
Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.
The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same as
always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed her satisfaction
that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at them Pierre realized what
contempt and animosity they all felt for the Rostóvs, and that it was impossible
in their presence even to mention the name of her who could give up Prince
Andrew for anyone else.
At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was becoming
evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with his father, now
with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an unnatural animation, the cause of
which Pierre so well understood.
CHAPTER XXII
That same evening Pierre went to the Rostóvs’ to fulfill the commission
entrusted to him. Natásha was in bed, the count at the club, and Pierre, after
giving the letters to Sónya, went to Márya Dmítrievna who was interested to
know how Prince Andrew had taken the news. Ten minutes later Sónya came to
Márya Dmítrievna.
“Natásha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirílovich,” said she.
“But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not been tidied
up.”
“No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room,” said Sónya.
Márya Dmítrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
“When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind, don’t
tell her everything!” said she to Pierre. “One hasn’t the heart to scold her, she is
so much to be pitied, so much to be pitied.”
Natásha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated, with a
pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected to find her. When he
appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently undecided whether to go to
meet him or to wait till he came up.
Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as usual; but
she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her arms hanging lifelessly
just in the pose she used to stand in when she went to the middle of the ballroom
to sing, but with quite a different expression of face.
“Peter Kirílovich,” she began rapidly, “Prince Bolkónski was your friend—is
your friend,” she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that everything that had
once been must now be different.) “He told me once to apply to you...”
Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then he had
reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he now felt so sorry for
her that there was no room in his soul for reproach.
“He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!” She stopped and breathed
still more quickly, but did not shed tears.
“Yes... I will tell him,” answered Pierre; “but...”
He did not know what to say.
Natásha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think she had
meant.
“No, I know all is over,” she said hurriedly. “No, that can never be. I’m only
tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only that I beg him to forgive,
forgive, forgive me for everything....”
She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.
A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre’s heart.
“I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more,” said Pierre. “But... I
should like to know one thing....”
“Know what?” Natásha’s eyes asked.
“I should like to know, did you love...” Pierre did not know how to refer to
Anatole and flushed at the thought of him—“did you love that bad man?”
“Don’t call him bad!” said Natásha. “But I don’t know, don’t know at all....”
She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness, and love welled
up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his spectacles and hoped they would
not be noticed.
“We won’t speak of it any more, my dear,” said Pierre, and his gentle, cordial
tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natásha.
“We won’t speak of it, my dear—I’ll tell him everything; but one thing I beg
of you, consider me your friend and if you want help, advice, or simply to open
your heart to someone—not now, but when your mind is clearer think of me!”
He took her hand and kissed it. “I shall be happy if it’s in my power...”
Pierre grew confused.
“Don’t speak to me like that. I am not worth it!” exclaimed Natásha and
turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.
He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it he was
amazed at his own words.
“Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you,” said he to her.
“Before me? No! All is over for me,” she replied with shame and self-
abasement.
“All over?” he repeated. “If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest,
and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment ask on my knees
for your hand and your love!”
For the first time for many days Natásha wept tears of gratitude and
tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.
Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom, restraining tears
of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without finding the sleeves of his fur
cloak threw it on and got into his sleigh.
“Where to now, your excellency?” asked the coachman.
“Where to?” Pierre asked himself. “Where can I go now? Surely not to the
Club or to pay calls?” All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in comparison with
this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in comparison with that
softened, grateful, last look she had given him through her tears.
“Home!” said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost Fahrenheit he
threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and inhaled the air with joy.
It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the black roofs,
stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky did Pierre cease to feel
how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things compared with the heights
to which his soul had just been raised. At the entrance to the Arbát Square an
immense expanse of dark starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the
center of it, above the Prechístenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all
sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its
white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of
1812—the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the
world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no
feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at
this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity
through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly—like an arrow piercing the earth
—to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and
displaying its white light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to
Pierre that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own softened
and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.
BOOK NINE: 1812
CHAPTER I
From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating of the
forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces—millions of men,
reckoning those transporting and feeding the army—moved from the west
eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since 1811 Russian forces had
been similarly drawn. On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western
Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place
opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated
against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts,
forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in
whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world,
but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.
What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The
historians tell us with naïve assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted
on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the
ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the
diplomatists, and so on.
Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich, Rumyántsev,
or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have taken proper pains
and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to have written to Alexander:
“My respected Brother, I consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of
Oldenburg”—and there would have been no war.
We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries. It
naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England’s intrigues (as
in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the
English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon’s ambition; to the
Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to
businessmen that the cause of the war was the Continental System which was
ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war
was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that
it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of
that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between Russia and
Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, and
from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It is natural that these and
a countless and infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the
endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day;
but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and
perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. To us it is
incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other
either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because
England’s policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot
grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter
and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the
other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolénsk and Moscow and
were killed by them.
To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried away by
the process of research and can therefore regard the event with unclouded
common sense, an incalculable number of causes present themselves. The deeper
we delve in search of these causes the more of them we find; and each separate
cause or whole series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally
false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its
impotence—apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident causes—to
occasion the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal to
serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon’s refusal to withdraw
his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he
not wished to serve, and had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and
private also refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon’s
army and the war could not have occurred.
Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw
beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would have
been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a second term then also
there could have been no war. Nor could there have been a war had there been
no English intrigues and no Duke of Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt
insulted, and had there not been an autocratic government in Russia, or a
Revolution in France and a subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things
that produced the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes
nothing could have happened. So all these causes—myriads of causes—
coincided to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that occurrence,
but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their human
feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as
some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west,
slaying their fellows.
The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed to
hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into
the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order
that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend)
should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed
without anyone of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary
that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power—the soldiers who fired,
or transported provisions and guns—should consent to carry out the will of these
weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an infinite number
of diverse and complex causes.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events
(that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The
more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable
and incomprehensible do they become to us.
Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal aims, and
feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from doing this or that
action; but as soon as he has done it, that action performed at a certain moment
in time becomes irrevocable and belongs to history, in which it has not a free but
a predestined significance.
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life, which is the
more free the more abstract its interests, and his elemental hive life in which he
inevitably obeys laws laid down for him.
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the
attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed done is
irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions of millions of other
men assumes an historic significance. The higher a man stands on the social
ladder, the more people he is connected with and the more power he has over
others, the more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every
action.
“The king’s heart is in the hands of the Lord.”
A king is history’s slave.
History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses every
moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.
Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever that it
depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses peuples *—as
Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him—he had never been so
much in the grip of inevitable laws, which compelled him, while thinking that he
was acting on his own volition, to perform for the hive life—that is to say, for
history—whatever had to be performed.
* “To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples.”
The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and by the
law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and co-ordinated to
produce that movement and war: reproaches for the nonobservance of the
Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg’s wrongs, the movement of troops
into Prussia—undertaken (as it seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of
securing an armed peace, the French Emperor’s love and habit of war coinciding
with his people’s inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations,
and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages
to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors he received in
Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the opinion of contemporaries,
were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace, but which only wounded
the self-love of both sides, and millions of other causes that adapted themselves
to the event that was happening or coincided with it.
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its
attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun,
because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy
standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which
all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist who finds that the
apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth is equally right with
the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to
eat it and prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon
went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired
his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons
fell because the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic
events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels
they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.
Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an
historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and
predestined from eternity.
CHAPTER II
On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent three
weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings, and even an
emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the emperor, kings, and
princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings and princes with whom he
was dissatisfied, presented pearls and diamonds of his own—that is, which he
had taken from other kings—to the Empress of Austria, and having, as his
historian tells us, tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise—who regarded
him as her husband, though he had left another wife in Paris—left her grieved by
the parting which she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the diplomatists still
firmly believed in the possibility of peace and worked zealously to that end, and
though the Emperor Napoleon himself wrote a letter to Alexander, calling him
Monsieur mon frère, and sincerely assured him that he did not want war and
would always love and honor him—yet he set off to join his army, and at every
station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his troops from west to
east. He went in a traveling coach with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides-
de-camp, and an escort, along the road to Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and
Königsberg. At each of these towns thousands of people met him with
excitement and enthusiasm.
The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses carried him
in the same direction. On the tenth of June, * coming up with the army, he spent
the night in apartments prepared for him on the estate of a Polish count in the
Vilkavisski forest.
* Old style.
Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the Niemen, and,
changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank in order to select a
place for the crossing.
Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the wide-
spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of Moscow (Moscou, la
ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the Scythia into which Alexander the
Great had marched—Napoleon unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and
diplomatic considerations, ordered an advance, and the next day his army began
to cross the Niemen.
Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent, which was
pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and looked through a
spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out of the Vilkavisski forest and
flowing over the three bridges thrown across the river. The troops, knowing of
the Emperor’s presence, were on the lookout for him, and when they caught
sight of a figure in an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in
front of his tent on the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: “Vive
l’Empereur!” and one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of the vast
forest that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and on by the three
bridges to the other side.
“Now we’ll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself, things get
hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l’Empereur! So these are the steppes of
Asia! It’s a nasty country all the same. Au revoir, Beauché; I’ll keep the best
palace in Moscow for you! Au revoir. Good luck!... Did you see the Emperor?
Vive l’Empereur!... preur!—If they make me Governor of India, Gérard, I’ll
make you Minister of Kashmir—that’s settled. Vive l’Empereur! Hurrah! hurrah!
hurrah! The Cossacks—those rascals—see how they run! Vive l’Empereur!
There he is, do you see him? I’ve seen him twice, as I see you now. The little
corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the veterans.... Vive l’Empereur!”
came the voices of men, old and young, of most diverse characters and social
positions. On the faces of all was one common expression of joy at the
commencement of the long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion to
the man in the gray coat who was standing on the hill.
On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse was brought
to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one of the bridges over the
Niemen, deafened continually by incessant and rapturous acclamations which he
evidently endured only because it was impossible to forbid the soldiers to
express their love of him by such shouting, but the shouting which accompanied
him everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military cares that
had occupied him from the time he joined the army. He rode across one of the
swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply to the left, and
galloped in the direction of Kóvno, preceded by enraptured, mounted chasseurs
of the Guard who, breathless with delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him
through the troops. On reaching the broad river Víliya, he stopped near a
regiment of Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.
“Vivat!” shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and pressing
against one another to see him.
Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a log
that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was handed him
which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run up to him, and he
gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became absorbed in a map laid out on the
logs. Without lifting his head he said something, and two of his aides-de-camp
galloped off to the Polish Uhlans.
“What? What did he say?” was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans when
one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.
The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel of the Polish
Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his speech from
excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted to swim the
river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford. In evident fear of refusal, like a
boy asking for permission to get on a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim
across the river before the Emperor’s eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that
probably the Emperor would not be displeased at this excess of zeal.
As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached officer, with
happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted “Vivat!” and,
commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse and galloped into the
river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which had grown restive under him,
and plunged into the water, heading for the deepest part where the current was
swift. Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the
rapid current in the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one
another as they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some
of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some clinging to
their horses’ manes. They tried to make their way forward to the opposite bank
and, though there was a ford one third of a mile away, were proud that they were
swimming and drowning in this river under the eyes of the man who sat on the
log and was not even looking at what they were doing. When the aide-de-camp,
having returned and choosing an opportune moment, ventured to draw the
Emperor’s attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the little man in
the gray overcoat got up and, having summoned Berthier, began pacing up and
down the bank with him, giving him instructions and occasionally glancing
disapprovingly at the drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.
For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of the world,
from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to dumfound people
and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called for his horse and rode to his
quarters.
Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were sent to their
assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from which they had started.
The colonel and some of his men got across and with difficulty clambered out on
the further bank. And as soon as they had got out, in their soaked and streaming
clothes, they shouted “Vivat!” and looked ecstatically at the spot where
Napoleon had been but where he no longer was and at that moment considered
themselves happy.
That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian paper money
prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as quickly as possible and another
that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a letter containing information about the
orders to the French army had been found, Napoleon also gave instructions that
the Polish colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled
in the Légion d’honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.
Quos vult perdere dementat. *
* Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.
CHAPTER III
The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vílna for more than a month,
reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for the war that
everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor had come from
Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The vacillation between the
various plans that were proposed had even increased after the Emperor had been
at headquarters for a month. Each of the three armies had its own commander in
chief, but there was no supreme commander of all the forces, and the Emperor
did not assume that responsibility himself.
The longer the Emperor remained in Vílna the less did everybody—tired of
waiting—prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who surrounded the
sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend his time pleasantly and
forget that war was impending.
In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by the
courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the Polish aides-de-
camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be given for the Emperor by his
aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly received. The Emperor gave his consent.
The aides-de-camp collected money by subscription. The lady who was thought
to be most pleasing to the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count
Bennigsen, being a landowner in the Vílna province, offered his country house
for the fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner, regatta, and
fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen’s country seat.
The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and his
vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian frontier, Alexander
spent the evening at the entertainment given by his aides-de-camp at
Bennigsen’s country house.
It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters declared that
rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one place. Countess
Bezúkhova was present among other Russian ladies who had followed the
sovereign from Petersburg to Vílna and eclipsed the refined Polish ladies by her
massive, so-called Russian type of beauty. The Emperor noticed her and honored
her with a dance.
Borís Drubetskóy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the present en
garçon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not an aide-de-camp, had
subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Borís was now a rich man who had
risen to high honors and no longer sought patronage but stood on an equal
footing with the highest of those of his own age. He was meeting Hélène in
Vílna after not having seen her for a long time and did not recall the past, but as
Hélène was enjoying the favors of a very important personage and Borís had
only recently married, they met as good friends of long standing.
At midnight dancing was still going on. Hélène, not having a suitable partner,
herself offered to dance the mazurka with Borís. They were the third couple.
Borís, coolly looking at Hélène’s dazzling bare shoulders which emerged from a
dark, gold-embroidered, gauze gown, talked to her of old acquaintances and at
the same time, unaware of it himself and unnoticed by others, never for an
instant ceased to observe the Emperor who was in the same room. The Emperor
was not dancing, he stood in the doorway, stopping now one pair and now
another with gracious words which he alone knew how to utter.
As the mazurka began, Borís saw that Adjutant General Balashëv, one of
those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him and contrary to court
etiquette stood near him while he was talking to a Polish lady. Having finished
speaking to her, the Emperor looked inquiringly at Balashëv and, evidently
understanding that he only acted thus because there were important reasons for
so doing, nodded slightly to the lady and turned to him. Hardly had Balashëv
begun to speak before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor’s face. He
took Balashëv by the arm and crossed the room with him, unconsciously
clearing a path seven yards wide as the people on both sides made way for him.
Borís noticed Arakchéev’s excited face when the sovereign went out with
Balashëv. Arakchéev looked at the Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing
with his red nose, stepped forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor
to address him. (Borís understood that Arakchéev envied Balashëv and was
displeased that evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise
than through himself.)
But the Emperor and Balashëv passed out into the illuminated garden without
noticing Arakchéev who, holding his sword and glancing wrathfully around,
followed some twenty paces behind them.
All the time Borís was going through the figures of the mazurka, he was
worried by the question of what news Balashëv had brought and how he could
find it out before others. In the figure in which he had to choose two ladies, he
whispered to Hélène that he meant to choose Countess Potocka who, he thought,
had gone out onto the veranda, and glided over the parquet to the door opening
into the garden, where, seeing Balashëv and the Emperor returning to the
veranda, he stood still. They were moving toward the door. Borís, fluttering as if
he had not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed close to the doorpost with
bowed head.
The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally affronted,
was finishing with these words:
“To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as long as a
single armed enemy remains in my country!” It seemed to Borís that it gave the
Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was satisfied with the form in which
he had expressed his thoughts, but displeased that Borís had overheard it.
“Let no one know of it!” the Emperor added with a frown.
Borís understood that this was meant for him and, closing his eyes, slightly
bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and remained there about
another half-hour.
Borís was thus the first to learn the news that the French army had crossed the
Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain important personages that
much that was concealed from others was usually known to him, and by this
means he rose higher in their estimation.
The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was
particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations, and at a ball. On
first receiving the news, under the influence of indignation and resentment the
Emperor had found a phrase that pleased him, fully expressed his feelings, and
has since become famous. On returning home at two o’clock that night he sent
for his secretary, Shishkóv, and told him to write an order to the troops and a
rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykóv, in which he insisted on the words
being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a single armed
Frenchman remained on Russian soil.
Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:
Monsieur mon frère,
Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty with which I have kept my
engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian frontier,
and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in which Count
Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression, that Your Majesty has
considered yourself to be in a state of war with me from the time Prince Kurákin
asked for his passports. The reasons on which the Duc de Bassano based his
refusal to deliver them to him would never have led me to suppose that that
could serve as a pretext for aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has
declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I was
informed of it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and ordered him to
remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend to shed the blood of our
peoples for such a misunderstanding, and consents to withdraw your troops from
Russian territory, I will regard what has passed as not having occurred and an
understanding between us will be possible. In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I
shall see myself forced to repel an attack that nothing on my part has provoked.
It still depends on Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the calamity of
another war.
I am, etc.,
(signed) Alexander
CHAPTER IV
At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having sent for
Balashëv and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him to take it and hand it
personally to the French Emperor. When dispatching Balashëv, the Emperor
repeated to him the words that he would not make peace so long as a single
armed enemy remained on Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to
Napoleon. Alexander did not insert them in his letter to Napoleon, because with
his characteristic tact he felt it would be injudicious to use them at a moment
when a last attempt at reconciliation was being made, but he definitely instructed
Balashëv to repeat them personally to Napoleon.
Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied by a bugler
and two Cossacks, Balashëv reached the French outposts at the village of
Rykónty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn. There he was stopped by
French cavalry sentinels.
A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform and a
shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashëv to halt. Balashëv did not do so
at once, but continued to advance along the road at a walking pace.
The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,
advanced his horse’s chest against Balashëv, put his hand to his saber, and
shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he deaf that he did not do as
he was told? Balashëv mentioned who he was. The noncommissioned officer
began talking with his comrades about regimental matters without looking at the
Russian general.
After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after conversing
with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in general being accustomed
to the respect due to his rank in the service, Balashëv found it very strange here
on Russian soil to encounter this hostile, and still more this disrespectful,
application of brute force to himself.
The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air was fresh and
dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road from the village, and over
the fields the larks rose trilling, one after another, like bubbles rising in water.
Balashëv looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer from the
village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French hussars looked silently
at one another from time to time.
A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed, came riding
from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse, accompanied by two hussars.
The officer, the soldiers, and their horses all looked smart and well kept.
It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full trim, almost
like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of martial swagger in their
clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit of enterprise which always
accompany the opening of a campaign.
The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was polite and
evidently understood Balashëv’s importance. He led him past his soldiers and
behind the outposts and told him that his wish to be presented to the Emperor
would most likely be satisfied immediately, as the Emperor’s quarters were, he
believed, not far off.
They rode through the village of Rykónty, past tethered French hussar horses,
past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and stared with curiosity at a
Russian uniform, and came out at the other end of the village. The colonel said
that the commander of the division was a mile and a quarter away and would
receive Balashëv and conduct him to his destination.
The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.
They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a group of
horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a black horse with
trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall man with plumes in his hat and
black hair curling down to his shoulders. He wore a red mantle, and stretched his
long legs forward in French fashion. This man rode toward Balashëv at a gallop,
his plumes flowing and his gems and gold lace glittering in the bright June
sunshine.
Balashëv was only two horses’ length from the equestrian with the bracelets,
plumes, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was galloping toward him with a
theatrically solemn countenance, when Julner, the French colonel, whispered
respectfully: “The King of Naples!” It was, in fact, Murat, now called “King of
Naples.” Though it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of
Naples, he was called so, and was himself convinced that he was so, and
therefore assumed a more solemn and important air than formerly. He was so
sure that he really was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of his departure
from that city, while walking through the streets with his wife, some Italians
called out to him: “Viva il re!” * he turned to his wife with a pensive smile and
said: “Poor fellows, they don’t know that I am leaving them tomorrow!”
* “Long live the king.”
But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and pitied the
grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly, after he had been ordered
to return to military service—and especially since his last interview with
Napoleon in Danzig, when his august brother-in-law had told him: “I made you
King that you should reign in my way, but not in yours!”—he had cheerfully
taken up his familiar business, and—like a well-fed but not overfat horse that
feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts—he dressed up in
clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and gaily and contentedly
galloped along the roads of Poland, without himself knowing why or whither.
On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its long hair
curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner, and looked inquiringly at
the French colonel. The colonel respectfully informed His Majesty of Balashëv’s
mission, whose name he could not pronounce.
“De Bal-machève!” said the King (overcoming by his assurance the difficulty
that had presented itself to the colonel). “Charmed to make your acquaintance,
General!” he added, with a gesture of kingly condescension.
As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity instantly
forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his natural tone of good-
natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the withers of Balashëv’s horse and said:
“Well, General, it all looks like war,” as if regretting a circumstance of which
he was unable to judge.
“Your Majesty,” replied Balashëv, “my master, the Emperor, does not desire
war and as Your Majesty sees...” said Balashëv, using the words Your Majesty at
every opportunity, with the affectation unavoidable in frequently addressing one
to whom the title was still a novelty.
Murat’s face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to “Monsieur de
Bal-machève.” But royauté oblige! * and he felt it incumbent on him, as a king
and an ally, to confer on state affairs with Alexander’s envoy. He dismounted,
took Balashëv’s arm, and moving a few steps away from his suite, which waited
respectfully, began to pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly.
He referred to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand that
he should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially when that demand
became generally known and the dignity of France was thereby offended.
* “Royalty has its obligations.”
Balashëv replied that there was “nothing offensive in the demand, because...”
but Murat interrupted him.
“Then you don’t consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?” he asked
unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.
Balashëv told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of the
war.
“Oh, my dear general!” Murat again interrupted him, “with all my heart I wish
the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and that the war begun by no
wish of mine may finish as quickly as possible!” said he, in the tone of a servant
who wants to remain good friends with another despite a quarrel between their
masters.
And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of his health,
and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had spent with him in
Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal dignity, Murat solemnly
drew himself up, assumed the pose in which he had stood at his coronation, and,
waving his right arm, said:
“I won’t detain you longer, General. I wish success to your mission,” and with
his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers, and his glittering ornaments,
he rejoined his suite who were respectfully awaiting him.
Balashëv rode on, supposing from Murat’s words that he would very soon be
brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the next village the
sentinels of Davout’s infantry corps detained him as the pickets of the vanguard
had done, and an adjutant of the corps commander, who was fetched, conducted
him into the village to Marshal Davout.
CHAPTER V
Davout was to Napoleon what Arakchéev was to Alexander—though not a
coward like Arakchéev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to express his
devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.
In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are necessary in
the organism of nature, and they always exist, always appear and hold their own,
however incongruous their presence and their proximity to the head of the
government may be. This inevitability alone can explain how the cruel
Arakchéev, who tore out a grenadier’s mustache with his own hands, whose
weak nerves rendered him unable to face danger, and who was neither an
educated man nor a courtier, was able to maintain his powerful position with
Alexander, whose own character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle.
Balashëv found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a peasant’s hut,
writing—he was auditing accounts. Better quarters could have been found him,
but Marshal Davout was one of those men who purposely put themselves in
most depressing conditions to have a justification for being gloomy. For the
same reason they are always hard at work and in a hurry. “How can I think of the
bright side of life when, as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a
dirty shed?” the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure and
necessity of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows animation, is to
flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity. Davout allowed himself that pleasure
when Balashëv was brought in. He became still more absorbed in his task when
the Russian general entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at Balashëv’s
face, which was animated by the beauty of the morning and by his talk with
Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still more and sneered
malevolently.
When he noticed in Balashëv’s face the disagreeable impression this reception
produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked what he wanted.
Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because Davout
did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor Alexander and even
his envoy to Napoleon, Balashëv hastened to inform him of his rank and
mission. Contrary to his expectation, Davout, after hearing him, became still
surlier and ruder.
“Where is your dispatch?” he inquired. “Give it to me. I will send it to the
Emperor.”
Balashëv replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to the
Emperor.
“Your Emperor’s orders are obeyed in your army, but here,” said Davout, “you
must do as you’re told.”
And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his dependence
on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer on duty.
Balashëv took out the packet containing the Emperor’s letter and laid it on the
table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging on it, laid across two barrels).
Davout took the packet and read the inscription.
“You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,” protested
Balashëv, “but permit me to observe that I have the honor to be adjutant general
to His Majesty....”
Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the signs of
agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashëv’s face.
“You will be treated as is fitting,” said he and, putting the packet in his pocket,
left the shed.
A minute later the marshal’s adjutant, de Castrès, came in and conducted
Balashëv to the quarters assigned him.
That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the barrels.
Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashëv to come to him,
peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the baggage train
should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one except Monsieur de
Castrès.
After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his impotence and
insignificance—particularly acute by contrast with the sphere of power in which
he had so lately moved—and after several marches with the marshal’s baggage
and the French army, which occupied the whole district, Balashëv was brought
to Vílna—now occupied by the French—through the very gate by which he had
left it four days previously.
Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne, came to
Balashëv and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon’s wish to honor him with
an audience.
Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhénsk regiment had stood in front
of the house to which Balashëv was conducted, and now two French grenadiers
stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front and with shaggy caps on their
heads, and an escort of hussars and Uhlans and a brilliant suite of aides-de-camp,
pages, and generals, who were waiting for Napoleon to come out, were standing
at the porch, round his saddle horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon
received Balashëv in the very house in Vílna from which Alexander had
dispatched him on his mission.
CHAPTER VI
Though Balashëv was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the luxury
and magnificence of Napoleon’s court.
The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many
generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates—several of whom
Balashëv had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia—were waiting. Duroc
said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before going for his ride.
After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came into the
great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashëv to follow him.
Balashëv went into a small reception room, one door of which led into a study,
the very one from which the Russian Emperor had dispatched him on his
mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He heard hurried footsteps beyond
the door, both halves of it were opened rapidly; all was silent and then from the
study the sound was heard of other steps, firm and resolute—they were those of
Napoleon. He had just finished dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform,
opening in front over a white waistcoat so long that it covered his rotund
stomach, white leather breeches tightly fitting the fat thighs of his short legs, and
Hessian boots. His short hair had evidently just been brushed, but one lock hung
down in the middle of his broad forehead. His plump white neck stood out
sharply above the black collar of his uniform, and he smelled of Eau de Cologne.
His full face, rather young-looking, with its prominent chin, wore a gracious and
majestic expression of imperial welcome.
He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head slightly thrown back.
His whole short corpulent figure with broad thick shoulders, and chest and
stomach involuntarily protruding, had that imposing and stately appearance one
sees in men of forty who live in comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the
best of spirits that day.
He nodded in answer to Balashëv’s low and respectful bow, and coming up to
him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of his time
and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but is sure he will always
say the right thing and say it well.
“Good day, General!” said he. “I have received the letter you brought from the
Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you.” He glanced with his large
eyes into Balashëv’s face and immediately looked past him.
It was plain that Balashëv’s personality did not interest him at all. Evidently
only what took place within his own mind interested him. Nothing outside
himself had any significance for him, because everything in the world, it seemed
to him, depended entirely on his will.
“I do not, and did not, desire war,” he continued, “but it has been forced on
me. Even now” (he emphasized the word) “I am ready to receive any
explanations you can give me.”
And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for dissatisfaction
with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly moderate and amicable
tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashëv was firmly persuaded that he
wished for peace and intended to enter into negotiations.
When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the Russian
envoy, Balashëv began a speech he had prepared long before: “Sire! The
Emperor, my master...” but the sight of the Emperor’s eyes bent on him confused
him. “You are flurried—compose yourself!” Napoleon seemed to say, as with a
scarcely perceptible smile he looked at Balashëv’s uniform and sword.
Balashëv recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the Emperor
Alexander did not consider Kurákin’s demand for his passports a sufficient cause
for war; that Kurákin had acted on his own initiative and without his sovereign’s
assent, that the Emperor Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with
England.
“Not yet!” interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to his feelings,
he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashëv might proceed.
After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashëv added that the
Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter into negotiations
except on condition that... Here Balashëv hesitated: he remembered the words
the Emperor Alexander had not written in his letter, but had specially inserted in
the rescript to Saltykóv and had told Balashëv to repeat to Napoleon. Balashëv
remembered these words, “So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian
soil,” but some complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though
he wished to do so. He grew confused and said: “On condition that the French
army retires beyond the Niemen.”
Napoleon noticed Balashëv’s embarrassment when uttering these last words;
his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to quiver rhythmically.
Without moving from where he stood he began speaking in a louder tone and
more hurriedly than before. During the speech that followed, Balashëv, who
more than once lowered his eyes, involuntarily noticed the quivering of
Napoleon’s left leg which increased the more Napoleon raised his voice.
“I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander,” he began. “Have I not
for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it? I have waited eighteen
months for explanations. But in order to begin negotiations, what is demanded of
me?” he said, frowning and making an energetic gesture of inquiry with his
small white plump hand.
“The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire,” replied Balashëv.
“The Niemen?” repeated Napoleon. “So now you want me to retire beyond
the Niemen—only the Niemen?” repeated Napoleon, looking straight at
Balashëv.
The latter bowed his head respectfully.
Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from Pomerania,
only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded. Napoleon turned
quickly and began to pace the room.
“You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen before
commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months ago the demand
was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the Oder, and yet you are
willing to negotiate.”
He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and again stopped
in front of Balashëv. Balashëv noticed that his left leg was quivering faster than
before and his face seemed petrified in its stern expression. This quivering of his
left leg was a thing Napoleon was conscious of. “The vibration of my left calf is
a great sign with me,” he remarked at a later date.
“Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be made to a
Prince of Baden, but not to me!” Napoleon almost screamed, quite to his own
surprise. “If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I could not accept such
conditions. You say I have begun this war! But who first joined his army? The
Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer me negotiations when I have expended
millions, when you are in alliance with England, and when your position is a bad
one. You offer me negotiations! But what is the aim of your alliance with
England? What has she given you?” he continued hurriedly, evidently no longer
trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss its possibility, but only to
prove his own rectitude and power and Alexander’s errors and duplicity.
The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the intention
of demonstrating the advantages of his position and showing that he was
nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had begun talking, and the more he
talked the less could he control his words.
The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt himself and
insult Alexander—just what he had least desired at the commencement of the
interview.
“I hear you have made peace with Turkey?”
Balashëv bowed his head affirmatively.
“Peace has been concluded...” he began.
But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all the talking
himself, and continued to talk with the sort of eloquence and unrestrained
irritability to which spoiled people are so prone.
“Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining Moldavia
and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those provinces as I gave him
Finland. Yes,” he went on, “I promised and would have given the Emperor
Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now he won’t have those splendid
provinces. Yet he might have united them to his empire and in a single reign
would have extended Russia from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the
Danube. Catherine the Great could not have done more,” said Napoleon,
growing more and more excited as he paced up and down the room, repeating to
Balashëv almost the very words he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. “All
that, he would have owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!” he
repeated several times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold snuffbox, lifted
it to his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.
“What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander’s might have been!”
He looked compassionately at Balashëv, and as soon as the latter tried to make
some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.
“What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained through my
friendship?” demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity. “But
no, he has preferred to surround himself with my enemies, and with whom? With
Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled
from his own country; Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a
fugitive French subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but
all the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807 and who
should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander’s mind.... Granted
that were they competent they might be made use of,” continued Napoleon—
hardly able to keep pace in words with the rush of thoughts that incessantly
sprang up, proving how right and strong he was (in his perception the two were
one and the same)—“but they are not even that! They are neither fit for war nor
peace! Barclay is said to be the most capable of them all, but I cannot say so,
judging by his first movements. And what are they doing, all these courtiers?
Pfuel proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and Barclay, called on
to act, does not know what to decide on, and time passes bringing no result.
Bagratión alone is a military man. He’s stupid, but he has experience, a quick
eye, and resolution.... And what role is your young monarch playing in that
monstrous crowd? They compromise him and throw on him the responsibility
for all that happens. A sovereign should not be with the army unless he is a
general!” said Napoleon, evidently uttering these words as a direct challenge to
the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired to be a military commander.
“The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven’t even been able to
defend Vílna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of the Polish
provinces. Your army is grumbling.”
“On the contrary, Your Majesty,” said Balashëv, hardly able to remember what
had been said to him and following these verbal fireworks with difficulty, “the
troops are burning with eagerness...”
“I know everything!” Napoleon interrupted him. “I know everything. I know
the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You have not two
hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number. I give you my word
of honor,” said Napoleon, forgetting that his word of honor could carry no
weight—“I give you my word of honor that I have five hundred and thirty
thousand men this side of the Vistula. The Turks will be of no use to you; they
are worth nothing and have shown it by making peace with you. As for the
Swedes—it is their fate to be governed by mad kings. Their king was insane and
they changed him for another—Bernadotte, who promptly went mad—for no
Swede would ally himself with Russia unless he were mad.”
Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his nose.
Balashëv knew how to reply to each of Napoleon’s remarks, and would have
done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing to say something, but
Napoleon always interrupted him. To the alleged insanity of the Swedes,
Balashëv wished to reply that when Russia is on her side Sweden is practically
an island: but Napoleon gave an angry exclamation to drown his voice.
Napoleon was in that state of irritability in which a man has to talk, talk, and
talk, merely to convince himself that he is in the right. Balashëv began to feel
uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean his dignity and felt the necessity of
replying; but, as a man, he shrank before the transport of groundless wrath that
had evidently seized Napoleon. He knew that none of the words now uttered by
Napoleon had any significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of
them when he came to his senses. Balashëv stood with downcast eyes, looking at
the movements of Napoleon’s stout legs and trying to avoid meeting his eyes.
“But what do I care about your allies?” said Napoleon. “I have allies—the
Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight like lions. And there will
be two hundred thousand of them.”
And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered this obvious
falsehood, and that Balashëv still stood silently before him in the same attitude
of submission to fate, Napoleon abruptly turned round, drew close to Balashëv’s
face, and, gesticulating rapidly and energetically with his white hands, almost
shouted:
“Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I’ll wipe it off the map of
Europe!” he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and he struck one of
his small hands energetically with the other. “Yes, I will throw you back beyond
the Dvína and beyond the Dnieper, and will re-erect against you that barrier
which it was criminal and blind of Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is
what will happen to you. That is what you have gained by alienating me!” And
he walked silently several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders
twitching.
He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again, lifted it
several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashëv. He paused, looked
ironically straight into Balashëv’s eyes, and said in a quiet voice:
“And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!”
Balashëv, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the Russian side
things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon was silent, still looking
derisively at him and evidently not listening to him. Balashëv said that in Russia
the best results were expected from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly,
as if to say, “I know it’s your duty to say that, but you don’t believe it yourself. I
have convinced you.”
When Balashëv had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox, sniffed at it,
and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal. The door opened, a
gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully, handed the Emperor his hat and
gloves; another brought him a pocket handkerchief. Napoleon, without giving
them a glance, turned to Balashëv:
“Assure the Emperor Alexander from me,” said he, taking his hat, “that I am
as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very highly esteem his
lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer, General; you shall receive my letter to
the Emperor.”
And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception room
rushed forward and descended the staircase.
CHAPTER VII
After all that Napoleon had said to him—those bursts of anger and the last
dryly spoken words: “I will detain you no longer, General; you shall receive my
letter,” Balashëv felt convinced that Napoleon would not wish to see him, and
would even avoid another meeting with him—an insulted envoy—especially as
he had witnessed his unseemly anger. But, to his surprise, Balashëv received,
through Duroc, an invitation to dine with the Emperor that day.
Bessières, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.
Napoleon met Balashëv cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed no sign
of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that morning, but, on the
contrary, tried to reassure Balashëv. It was evident that he had long been
convinced that it was impossible for him to make a mistake, and that in his
perception whatever he did was right, not because it harmonized with any idea of
right and wrong, but because he did it.
The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vílna, where
crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him. From all the
windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs, flags, and his monogram
were displayed, and the Polish ladies, welcoming him, waved their
handkerchiefs to him.
At dinner, having placed Balashëv beside him, Napoleon not only treated him
amiably but behaved as if Balashëv were one of his own courtiers, one of those
who sympathized with his plans and ought to rejoice at his success. In the course
of conversation he mentioned Moscow and questioned Balashëv about the
Russian capital, not merely as an interested traveler asks about a new city he
intends to visit, but as if convinced that Balashëv, as a Russian, must be flattered
by his curiosity.
“How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it true
that Moscow is called ‘Holy Moscow’? How many churches are there in
Moscow?” he asked.
And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred churches, he
remarked:
“Why such a quantity of churches?”
“The Russians are very devout,” replied Balashëv.
“But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the
backwardness of a people,” said Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for
appreciation of this remark.
Balashëv respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.
“Every country has its own character,” said he.
“But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that,” said Napoleon.
“I beg your Majesty’s pardon,” returned Balashëv, “besides Russia there is
Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries.”
This reply of Balashëv’s, which hinted at the recent defeats of the French in
Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at Alexander’s court, but it was
not much appreciated at Napoleon’s dinner, where it passed unnoticed.
The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that they were
puzzled as to what Balashëv’s tone suggested. “If there is a point we don’t see it,
or it is not at all witty,” their expressions seemed to say. So little was his
rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon did not notice it at all and naïvely asked
Balashëv through what towns the direct road from there to Moscow passed.
Balashëv, who was on the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as “all
roads lead to Rome,” so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and
“among them the road through Poltáva, which Charles XII chose.” Balashëv
involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this reply, but hardly had he
uttered the word Poltáva before Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of
the road from Petersburg to Moscow and of his Petersburg reminiscences.
After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon’s study, which four days
previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon sat down, toying
with his Sèvres coffee cup, and motioned Balashëv to a chair beside him.
Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than any
reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to consider
everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was surrounded by men who
adored him: and he felt convinced that, after his dinner, Balashëv too was his
friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned to him with a pleasant, though slightly
ironic, smile.
“They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied? Strange, isn’t
it, General?” he said, evidently not doubting that this remark would be agreeable
to his hearer since it went to prove his, Napoleon’s, superiority to Alexander.
Balashëv made no reply and bowed his head in silence.
“Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were deliberating,”
continued Napoleon with the same derisive and self-confident smile. “What I
can’t understand,” he went on, “is that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded
himself with my personal enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not
thought that I may do the same?” and he turned inquiringly to Balashëv, and
evidently this thought turned him back on to the track of his morning’s anger,
which was still fresh in him.
“And let him know that I will do so!” said Napoleon, rising and pushing his
cup away with his hand. “I’ll drive all his Württemberg, Baden, and Weimar
relations out of Germany.... Yes. I’ll drive them out. Let him prepare an asylum
for them in Russia!”
Balashëv bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to make his
bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help hearing what was
said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression; he treated Balashëv not as
an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now fully devoted to him and who must
rejoice at his former master’s humiliation.
“And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What is
the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to reign and not to
command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a responsibility?”
Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up and down
the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, went up to Balashëv
and with a slight smile, as confidently, quickly, and simply as if he were doing
something not merely important but pleasing to Balashëv, he raised his hand to
the forty-year-old Russian general’s face and, taking him by the ear, pulled it
gently, smiling with his lips only.
To have one’s ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the greatest honor
and mark of favor at the French court.
“Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don’t you say
anything?” said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to be the adorer and
courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. “Are the horses ready for the
general?” he added, with a slight inclination of his head in reply to Balashëv’s
bow. “Let him have mine, he has a long way to go!”
The letter taken by Balashëv was the last Napoleon sent to Alexander. Every
detail of the interview was communicated to the Russian monarch, and the war
began....
CHAPTER VIII
After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to Petersburg,
on business as he told his family, but really to meet Anatole Kurágin whom he
felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching Petersburg he inquired for Kurágin
but the latter had already left the city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that
Prince Andrew was on his track. Anatole Kurágin promptly obtained an
appointment from the Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia.
While in Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutúzov, his former commander who
was always well disposed toward him, and Kutúzov suggested that he should
accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general had been
appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having received an
appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.
Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge Kurágin. He
thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause it might compromise
the young Countess Rostóva and so he wanted to meet Kurágin personally in
order to find a fresh pretext for a duel. But he again failed to meet Kurágin in
Turkey, for soon after Prince Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a
new country, amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear.
After his betrothed had broken faith with him—which he felt the more acutely
the more he tried to conceal its effects—the surroundings in which he had been
happy became trying to him, and the freedom and independence he had once
prized so highly were still more so. Not only could he no longer think the
thoughts that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on the field of
Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his
solitude at Boguchárovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded
to recall them and the bright and boundless horizons they had revealed. He was
now concerned only with the nearest practical matters unrelated to his past
interests, and he seized on these the more eagerly the more those past interests
were closed to him. It was as if that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had
once towered above him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed
him down, in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.
Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was the
simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutúzov’s staff, he applied
himself to business with zeal and perseverance and surprised Kutúzov by his
willingness and accuracy in work. Not having found Kurágin in Turkey, Prince
Andrew did not think it necessary to rush back to Russia after him, but all the
same he knew that however long it might be before he met Kurágin, despite his
contempt for him and despite all the proofs he deduced to convince himself that
it was not worth stooping to a conflict with him—he knew that when he did meet
him he would not be able to resist calling him out, any more than a ravenous
man can help snatching at food. And the consciousness that the insult was not
yet avenged, that his rancor was still unspent, weighed on his heart and poisoned
the artificial tranquillity which he managed to obtain in Turkey by means of
restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and ambitious activity.
In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached Bucharest—
where Kutúzov had been living for two months, passing his days and nights with
a Wallachian woman—Prince Andrew asked Kutúzov to transfer him to the
Western Army. Kutúzov, who was already weary of Bolkónski’s activity which
seemed to reproach his own idleness, very readily let him go and gave him a
mission to Barclay de Tolly.
Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped at
Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on his way, being
only two miles off the Smolénsk highroad. During the last three years there had
been so many changes in his life, he had thought, felt, and seen so much (having
traveled both in the east and the west), that on reaching Bald Hills it struck him
as strange and unexpected to find the way of life there unchanged and still the
same in every detail. He entered through the gates with their stone pillars and
drove up the avenue leading to the house as if he were entering an enchanted,
sleeping castle. The same old stateliness, the same cleanliness, the same stillness
reigned there, and inside there was the same furniture, the same walls, sounds,
and smell, and the same timid faces, only somewhat older. Princess Mary was
still the same timid, plain maiden getting on in years, uselessly and joylessly
passing the best years of her life in fear and constant suffering. Mademoiselle
Bourienne was the same coquettish, self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of
her existence and full of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become
more self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had brought
from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and talking broken Russian
to the servants, but was still the same narrowly intelligent, conscientious, and
pedantic preceptor. The old prince had changed in appearance only by the loss of
a tooth, which left a noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was
the same as ever, only showing still more irritability and skepticism as to what
was happening in the world. Little Nicholas alone had changed. He had grown,
become rosier, had curly dark hair, and, when merry and laughing, quite
unconsciously lifted the upper lip of his pretty little mouth just as the little
princess used to do. He alone did not obey the law of immutability in the
enchanted, sleeping castle. But though externally all remained as of old, the
inner relations of all these people had changed since Prince Andrew had seen
them last. The household was divided into two alien and hostile camps, who
changed their habits for his sake and only met because he was there. To the one
camp belonged the old prince, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the
other Princess Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and maids.
During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but they were ill at
ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for whose sake an exception
was being made and that his presence made them all feel awkward. Involuntarily
feeling this at dinner on the first day, he was taciturn, and the old prince noticing
this also became morosely dumb and retired to his apartments directly after
dinner. In the evening, when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse
him, began to tell him of the young Count Kámensky’s campaign, the old prince
began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for her
superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he said, was the
only person really attached to him.
The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of Princess Mary:
that she purposely worried and irritated him, and that by indulgence and silly
talk she was spoiling little Prince Nicholas. The old prince knew very well that
he tormented his daughter and that her life was very hard, but he also knew that
he could not help tormenting her and that she deserved it. “Why does Prince
Andrew, who sees this, say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me a
scoundrel, or an old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own daughter at a
distance and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He doesn’t understand, so I
must explain it, and he must hear me out,” thought the old prince. And he began
explaining why he could not put up with his daughter’s unreasonable character.
“If you ask me,” said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was censuring
his father for the first time in his life), “I did not wish to speak about it, but as
you ask me I will give you my frank opinion. If there is any misunderstanding
and discord between you and Mary, I can’t blame her for it at all. I know how
she loves and respects you. Since you ask me,” continued Prince Andrew,
becoming irritable—as he was always liable to do of late—“I can only say that if
there are any misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless woman, who
is not fit to be my sister’s companion.”
The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural smile disclosed
the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew could not get
accustomed.
“What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You’ve already been talking it over!
Eh?”
“Father, I did not want to judge,” said Prince Andrew, in a hard and bitter
tone, “but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall say, that Mary is
not to blame, but those to blame—the one to blame—is that Frenchwoman.”
“Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!” said the old man in a low
voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some embarrassment, but then he
suddenly jumped up and cried: “Be off, be off! Let not a trace of you remain
here!...”
Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded him to
stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did not leave his room
and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne and Tíkhon, but asked several
times whether his son had gone. Next day, before leaving, Prince Andrew went
to his son’s rooms. The boy, curly-headed like his mother and glowing with
health, sat on his knee, and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of
Bluebeard, but fell into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of
this pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He sought in
himself either remorse for having angered his father or regret at leaving home
for the first time in his life on bad terms with him, and was horrified to find
neither. What meant still more to him was that he sought and did not find in
himself the former tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken by
caressing the boy and taking him on his knee.
“Well, go on!” said his son.
Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went out of
the room.
As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and especially
on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he had been happy,
weariness of life overcame him with its former intensity, and he hastened to
escape from these memories and to find some work as soon as possible.
“So you’ve decided to go, Andrew?” asked his sister.
“Thank God that I can,” replied Prince Andrew. “I am very sorry you can’t.”
“Why do you say that?” replied Princess Mary. “Why do you say that, when
you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old? Mademoiselle Bourienne
says he has been asking about you....”
As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her tears began to
fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the room.
“Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what—what trash—can
cause people misery!” he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess Mary.
She understood that when speaking of “trash” he referred not only to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man who had
ruined his own happiness.
“Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!” she said, touching his elbow and
looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears. “I understand you” (she
looked down). “Don’t imagine that sorrow is the work of men. Men are His
tools.” She looked a little above Prince Andrew’s head with the confident,
accustomed look with which one looks at the place where a familiar portrait
hangs. “Sorrow is sent by Him, not by men. Men are His instruments, they are
not to blame. If you think someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We
have no right to punish. And then you will know the happiness of forgiving.”
“If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman’s virtue. But a man
should not and cannot forgive and forget,” he replied, and though till that
moment he had not been thinking of Kurágin, all his unexpended anger suddenly
swelled up in his heart.
“If Mary is already persuading me to forgive, it means that I ought long ago to
have punished him,” he thought. And giving her no further reply, he began
thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he would meet Kurágin who he
knew was now in the army.
Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she knew how
unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being reconciled to him, but
Prince Andrew replied that he would probably soon be back again from the army
and would certainly write to his father, but that the longer he stayed now the
more embittered their differences would become.
“Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men are
never to blame,” were the last words he heard from his sister when he took leave
of her.
“Then it must be so!” thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the avenue
from the house at Bald Hills. “She, poor innocent creature, is left to be
victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits. The old man feels he is
guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up and rejoices in life, in
which like everybody else he will deceive or be deceived. And I am off to the
army. Why? I myself don’t know. I want to meet that man whom I despise, so as
to give him a chance to kill and laugh at me!”
These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they were all
connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only senseless things,
lacking coherence, presented themselves one after another to Prince Andrew’s
mind.
CHAPTER IX
Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the end of
June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied the fortified camp at
Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying to effect a junction with the first
one from which it was said to be cut off by large French forces. Everyone was
dissatisfied with the general course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one
anticipated any danger of invasion of the Russian provinces, and no one thought
the war would extend farther than the western, the Polish, provinces.
Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been assigned, on the
bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or large village in the vicinity
of the camp, the immense number of generals and courtiers accompanying the
army were living in the best houses of the villages on both sides of the river,
over a radius of six miles. Barclay de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles
from the Emperor. He received Bolkónski stiffly and coldly and told him in his
foreign accent that he would mention him to the Emperor for a decision as to his
employment, but asked him meanwhile to remain on his staff. Anatole Kurágin,
whom Prince Andrew had hoped to find with the army, was not there. He had
gone to Petersburg, but Prince Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind was
occupied by the interests of the center that was conducting a gigantic war, and he
was glad to be free for a while from the distraction caused by the thought of
Kurágin. During the first four days, while no duties were required of him, Prince
Andrew rode round the whole fortified camp and, by the aid of his own
knowledge and by talks with experts, tried to form a definite opinion about it.
But the question whether the camp was advantageous or disadvantageous
remained for him undecided. Already from his military experience and what he
had seen in the Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in war the
most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all depends on the
way unexpected movements of the enemy—that cannot be foreseen—are met,
and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled. To clear up this last point
for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his position and acquaintances, tried to
fathom the character of the control of the army and of the men and parties
engaged in it, and he deduced for himself the following of the state of affairs.
While the Emperor had still been at Vílna, the forces had been divided into
three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly, secondly, the army under
Bagratión, and thirdly, the one commanded by Tormásov. The Emperor was with
the first army, but not as commander in chief. In the orders issued it was stated,
not that the Emperor would take command, but only that he would be with the
army. The Emperor, moreover, had with him not a commander in chief’s staff
but the imperial headquarters staff. In attendance on him was the head of the
imperial staff, Quartermaster General Prince Volkónski, as well as generals,
imperial aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large number of foreigners,
but not the army staff. Besides these, there were in attendance on the Emperor
without any definite appointments: Arakchéev, the ex-Minister of War; Count
Bennigsen, the senior general in rank; the Grand Duke Tsarévich Constantine
Pávlovich; Count Rumyántsev, the Chancellor; Stein, a former Prussian minister;
Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel, the chief author of the plan of campaign;
Paulucci, an adjutant general and Sardinian émigré; Wolzogen—and many
others. Though these men had no military appointment in the army, their position
gave them influence, and often a corps commander, or even the commander in
chief, did not know in what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand
Duke, Arakchéev, or Prince Volkónski, or was given this or that advice and did
not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice emanated from
the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it had to be executed or
not. But this was only the external condition; the essential significance of the
presence of the Emperor and of all these people, from a courtier’s point of view
(and in an Emperor’s vicinity all became courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was
this: the Emperor did not assume the title of commander in chief, but disposed of
all the armies; the men around him were his assistants. Arakchéev was a faithful
custodian to enforce order and acted as the sovereign’s bodyguard. Bennigsen
was a landlord in the Vílna province who appeared to be doing the honors of the
district, but was in reality a good general, useful as an adviser and ready at hand
to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke was there because it suited him to be. The
ex-Minister Stein was there because his advice was useful and the Emperor
Alexander held him in high esteem personally. Armfeldt virulently hated
Napoleon and was a general full of self-confidence, a quality that always
influenced Alexander. Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in
speech. The adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the
Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn up the
plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander to believe in
the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole business of the war. With Pfuel
was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel’s thoughts in a more comprehensible way
than Pfuel himself (who was a harsh, bookish theorist, self-confident to the point
of despising everyone else) was able to do.
Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and unexpected
ideas every day—especially the foreigners, who did so with a boldness
characteristic of people employed in a country not their own—there were many
secondary personages accompanying the army because their principals were
there.
Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless, brilliant, and proud
sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following sharply defined subdivisions of
tendencies and parties:
The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents—military theorists who
believed in a science of war with immutable laws—laws of oblique movements,
outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his adherents demanded a retirement into
the depths of the country in accordance with precise laws defined by a pseudo-
theory of war, and they saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil intention in every
deviation from that theory. To this party belonged the foreign nobles, Wolzogen,
Wintzingerode, and others, chiefly Germans.
The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme, as always
happens, was met by representatives of the other. The members of this party
were those who had demanded an advance from Vílna into Poland and freedom
from all prearranged plans. Besides being advocates of bold action, this section
also represented nationalism, which made them still more one-sided in the
dispute. They were Russians: Bagratión, Ermólov (who was beginning to come
to the front), and others. At that time a famous joke of Ermólov’s was being
circulated, that as a great favor he had petitioned the Emperor to make him a
German. The men of that party, remembering Suvórov, said that what one had to
do was not to reason, or stick pins into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep
him out of Russia, and not let the army get discouraged.
To the third party—in which the Emperor had most confidence—belonged the
courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the other two. The members
of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom Arakchéev belonged, thought and
said what men who have no convictions but wish to seem to have some generally
say. They said that undoubtedly war, particularly against such a genius as
Bonaparte (they called him Bonaparte now), needs most deeply devised plans
and profound scientific knowledge and in that respect Pfuel was a genius, but at
the same time it had to be acknowledged that the theorists are often one-sided,
and therefore one should not trust them absolutely, but should also listen to what
Pfuel’s opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had to say, and
then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention of the camp at
Drissa, according to Pfuel’s plan, but on changing the movements of the other
armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim nor the other could be attained,
yet it seemed best to the adherents of this third party.
Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the Tsarévich,
who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz, where he had ridden out at
the head of the Guards, in his casque and cavalry uniform as to a review,
expecting to crush the French gallantly; but unexpectedly finding himself in the
front line had narrowly escaped amid the general confusion. The men of this
party had both the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions. They
feared Napoleon, recognized his strength and their own weakness, and frankly
said so. They said: “Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin will come of all this!
We have abandoned Vílna and Vítebsk and shall abandon Drissa. The only
reasonable thing left to do is to conclude peace as soon as possible, before we
are turned out of Petersburg.”
This view was very general in the upper army circles and found support also
in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyántsev, who, for other reasons of
state, was in favor of peace.
The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay de Tolly, not
so much as a man but as minister of war and commander in chief. “Be he what
he may” (they always began like that), “he is an honest, practical man and we
have nobody better. Give him real power, for war cannot be conducted
successfully without unity of command, and he will show what he can do, as he
did in Finland. If our army is well organized and strong and has withdrawn to
Drissa without suffering any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If Barclay
is now to be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for Bennigsen showed his
incapacity already in 1807.”
The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at any rate there
was no one more active and experienced than Bennigsen: “and twist about as
you may, you will have to come to Bennigsen eventually. Let the others make
mistakes now!” said they, arguing that our retirement to Drissa was a most
shameful reverse and an unbroken series of blunders. “The more mistakes that
are made the better. It will at any rate be understood all the sooner that things
cannot go on like this. What is wanted is not some Barclay or other, but a man
like Bennigsen, who made his mark in 1807, and to whom Napoleon himself did
justice—a man whose authority would be willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is
the only such man.”
The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always to be found,
especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there were particularly many
round Alexander—generals and imperial aides-de-camp passionately devoted to
the Emperor, not merely as a monarch but as a man, adoring him sincerely and
disinterestedly, as Rostóv had done in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the
virtues but all human capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with the
sovereign for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for such
excessive modesty, and only desired and insisted that their adored sovereign
should abandon his diffidence and openly announce that he would place himself
at the head of the army, gather round him a commander in chief’s staff, and,
consulting experienced theoreticians and practical men where necessary, would
himself lead the troops, whose spirits would thereby be raised to the highest
pitch.
The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to the
others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither peace nor
war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa or anywhere else,
neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor Bennigsen, but only the one
most essential thing—as much advantage and pleasure for themselves as
possible. In the troubled waters of conflicting and intersecting intrigues that
eddied about the Emperor’s headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many
ways unthinkable at other times. A man who simply wished to retain his
lucrative post would today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and
the day after, merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor, would
declare that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who wished to gain
some advantage would attract the Emperor’s attention by loudly advocating the
very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day before, and would dispute and
shout at the council, beating his breast and challenging those who did not agree
with him to duels, thereby proving that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for
the common good. A third, in the absence of opponents, between two councils
would simply solicit a special gratuity for his faithful services, well knowing that
at that moment people would be too busy to refuse him. A fourth while
seemingly overwhelmed with work would often come accidentally under the
Emperor’s eye. A fifth, to achieve his long-cherished aim of dining with the
Emperor, would stubbornly insist on the correctness or falsity of some newly
emerging opinion and for this object would produce arguments more or less
forcible and correct.
All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations, and promotions,
and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of imperial favor, and directly
they noticed it turning in any direction, this whole drone population of the army
began blowing hard that way, so that it was all the harder for the Emperor to turn
it elsewhere. Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious
danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid this vortex
of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings, and the diversity of race
among these people—this eighth and largest party of those preoccupied with
personal interests imparted great confusion and obscurity to the common task.
Whatever question arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their
buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum
drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.
From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached the
army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning to raise its
voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men experienced and capable
in state affairs, who, without sharing any of those conflicting opinions, were able
to take a detached view of what was going on at the staff at headquarters and to
consider means of escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.
The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong resulted chiefly
from the Emperor’s presence in the army with his military court and from the
consequent presence there of an indefinite, conditional, and unsteady fluctuation
of relations, which is in place at court but harmful in an army; that a sovereign
should reign but not command the army, and that the only way out of the
position would be for the Emperor and his court to leave the army; that the mere
presence of the Emperor paralyzed the action of fifty thousand men required to
secure his personal safety, and that the worst commander in chief, if
independent, would be better than the very best one trammeled by the presence
and authority of the monarch.
Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa, Shishkóv, the
Secretary of State and one of the chief representatives of this party, wrote a letter
to the Emperor which Arakchéev and Balashëv agreed to sign. In this letter,
availing himself of permission given him by the Emperor to discuss the general
course of affairs, he respectfully suggested—on the plea that it was necessary for
the sovereign to arouse a warlike spirit in the people of the capital—that the
Emperor should leave the army.
That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to them to defend
their country—the very incitement which was the chief cause of Russia’s
triumph in so far as it was produced by the Tsar’s personal presence in Moscow
—was suggested to the Emperor, and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting
the army.
CHAPTER X
This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when Barclay, one day
at dinner, informed Bolkónski that the sovereign wished to see him personally, to
question him about Turkey, and that Prince Andrew was to present himself at
Bennigsen’s quarters at six that evening.
News was received at the Emperor’s quarters that very day of a fresh
movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army—news subsequently
found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had ridden round the
Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had pointed out to him that this
fortified camp constructed by Pfuel, and till then considered a chef-d’oeuvre of
tactical science which would ensure Napoleon’s destruction, was an absurdity,
threatening the destruction of the Russian army.
Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen’s quarters—a country gentleman’s house
of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river. Neither Bennigsen nor
the Emperor was there, but Chernýshev, the Emperor’s aide-de-camp, received
Bolkónski and informed him that the Emperor, accompanied by General
Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had gone a second time that day to inspect the
fortifications of the Drissa camp, of the suitability of which serious doubts were
beginning to be felt.
Chernýshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French novel in
his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was still an organ in
it on which some rugs were piled, and in one corner stood the folding bedstead
of Bennigsen’s adjutant. This adjutant was also there and sat dozing on the
rolled-up bedding, evidently exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led
from the room, one straight on into what had been the drawing room, and
another, on the right, to the study. Through the first door came the sound of
voices conversing in German and occasionally in French. In that drawing room
were gathered, by the Emperor’s wish, not a military council (the Emperor
preferred indefiniteness), but certain persons whose opinions he wished to know
in view of the impending difficulties. It was not a council of war, but, as it were,
a council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor personally. To this
semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General Armfeldt, Adjutant General
Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had referred to as a renegade French
subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein who was not a military man at all, and Pfuel
himself, who, as Prince Andrew had heard, was the mainspring of the whole
affair. Prince Andrew had an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel
arrived soon after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped
a minute to speak to Chernýshev.
At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general, which fitted
him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince Andrew, though he
saw him now for the first time. There was about him something of Weyrother,
Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German theorist-generals whom Prince
Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more typical than any of them. Prince
Andrew had never yet seen a German theorist in whom all the characteristics of
those others were united to such an extent.
Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust build, broad
in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face was much wrinkled
and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been hastily brushed smooth in
front of the temples, but stuck up behind in quaint little tufts. He entered the
room, looking restlessly and angrily around, as if afraid of everything in that
large apartment. Awkwardly holding up his sword, he addressed Chernýshev and
asked in German where the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass
through the rooms as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and greetings, and
sit down to business in front of a map, where he would feel at home. He nodded
hurriedly in reply to Chernýshev, and smiled ironically on hearing that the
sovereign was inspecting the fortifications that he, Pfuel, had planned in accord
with his theory. He muttered something to himself abruptly and in a bass voice,
as self-assured Germans do—it might have been “stupid fellow”... or “the whole
affair will be ruined,” or “something absurd will come of it.”... Prince Andrew
did not catch what he said and would have passed on, but Chernýshev introduced
him to Pfuel, remarking that Prince Andrew was just back from Turkey where
the war had terminated so fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced—not so much at
Prince Andrew as past him—and said, with a laugh: “That must have been a fine
tactical war”; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the room from which
the sound of voices was heard.
Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly disturbed that
day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to inspect and criticize his camp in
his absence. From this short interview with Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his
Austerlitz experiences, was able to form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel
was one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men, self-confident to
the point of martyrdom as only Germans are, because only Germans are self-
confident on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the supposed
knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards
himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and
women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized
state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should
do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An
Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other
people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not
want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.
The German’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than
any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth—science—which he
himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science—the theory of oblique
movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the Great’s wars, and
all he came across in the history of more recent warfare seemed to him absurd
and barbarous—monstrous collisions in which so many blunders were
committed by both sides that these wars could not be called wars, they did not
accord with the theory, and therefore could not serve as material for science.
In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of campaign that
ended in Jena and Auerstädt, but he did not see the least proof of the fallibility of
his theory in the disasters of that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from
his theory were, in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with
characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, “There, I said the whole
affair would go to the devil!” Pfuel was one of those theoreticians who so love
their theory that they lose sight of the theory’s object—its practical application.
His love of theory made him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to
it. He was even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in
practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his theory.
He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernýshev about the present war,
with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all will go wrong, and who is
not displeased that it should be so. The unbrushed tufts of hair sticking up
behind and the hastily brushed hair on his temples expressed this most
eloquently.
He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of his voice
were at once heard from there.
CHAPTER XI
Prince Andrew’s eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when Count
Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkónski, but not pausing, went
into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as he went. The Emperor was
following him, and Bennigsen had hastened on to make some preparations and
to be ready to receive the sovereign. Chernýshev and Prince Andrew went out
into the porch, where the Emperor, who looked fatigued, was dismounting.
Marquis Paulucci was talking to him with particular warmth and the Emperor,
with his head bent to the left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor
moved forward evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the flushed and
excited Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and continued to speak.
“And as for the man who advised forming this camp—the Drissa camp,” said
Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince Andrew scanned
his unfamiliar face, “as to that person, sire...” continued Paulucci, desperately,
apparently unable to restrain himself, “the man who advised the Drissa camp—I
see no alternative but the lunatic asylum or the gallows!”
Without heeding the end of the Italian’s remarks, and as though not hearing
them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkónski, addressed him graciously.
“I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting, and wait for
me.”
The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter
Mikháylovich Volkónski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind them.
Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor’s permission, accompanied
Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing room where the
council was assembled.
Prince Peter Mikháylovich Volkónski occupied the position, as it were, of
chief of the Emperor’s staff. He came out of the study into the drawing room
with some maps which he spread on a table, and put questions on which he
wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen present. What had happened was
that news (which afterwards proved to be false) had been received during the
night of a movement by the French to outflank the Drissa camp.
The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the difficulty that
presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly new position away from the
Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for this was inexplicable (unless he
wished to show that he, too, could have an opinion), but he urged that at this
point the army should unite and there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt
had thought out that plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to answer
the questions put—which, in fact, his plan did not answer—as to avail himself of
the opportunity to air it. It was one of the millions of proposals, one as good as
another, that could be made as long as it was quite unknown what character the
war would take. Some disputed his arguments, others defended them. Young
Count Toll objected to the Swedish general’s views more warmly than anyone
else, and in the course of the dispute drew from his side pocket a well-filled
notebook, which he asked permission to read to them. In these voluminous notes
Toll suggested another scheme, totally different from Armfeldt’s or Pfuel’s plan
of campaign. In answer to Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack,
which, he urged, could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from
the trap (as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.
During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen (his “bridge”
in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted contemptuously and turned
away, to show that he would never demean himself by replying to such nonsense
as he was now hearing. So when Prince Volkónski, who was in the chair, called
on him to give his opinion, he merely said:
“Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position with an
exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman’s attack—very fine, or a retreat,
also good! Why ask me?” said he. “Why, you yourselves know everything better
than I do.”
But when Volkónski said, with a frown, that it was in the Emperor’s name that
he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly growing animated, began to
speak:
“Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody thought they
knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How mend matters? There is
nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me must be strictly adhered to,”
said he, drumming on the table with his bony fingers. “What is the difficulty?
Nonsense, childishness!”
He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no eventuality
could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that everything had been foreseen,
and that if the enemy were really going to outflank it, the enemy would
inevitably be destroyed.
Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in French.
Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French badly, and
began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with Pfuel, who was rapidly
demonstrating that not only all that had happened, but all that could happen, had
been foreseen in his scheme, and that if there were now any difficulties the
whole fault lay in the fact that his plan had not been precisely executed. He kept
laughing sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last contemptuously ceased to
demonstrate, like a mathematician who ceases to prove in various ways the
accuracy of a problem that has already been proved. Wolzogen took his place
and continued to explain his views in French, every now and then turning to
Pfuel and saying, “Is it not so, your excellency?” But Pfuel, like a man heated in
a fight who strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at his own supporter,
Wolzogen:
“Well, of course, what more is there to explain?”
Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in French.
Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to Volkónski in Russian.
Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.
Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry,
determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those present,
evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself, nursed no hatred
against anyone, and only desired that the plan, formed on a theory arrived at by
years of toil, should be carried out. He was ridiculous, and unpleasantly
sarcastic, but yet he inspired involuntary respect by his boundless devotion to an
idea. Besides this, the remarks of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had
not been noticeable at the council of war in 1805: there was now a panic fear of
Napoleon’s genius, which, though concealed, was noticeable in every rejoinder.
Everything was assumed to be possible for Napoleon, they expected him from
every side, and invoked his terrible name to shatter each other’s proposals. Pfuel
alone seemed to consider Napoleon a barbarian like everyone else who opposed
his theory. But besides this feeling of respect, Pfuel evoked pity in Prince
Andrew. From the tone in which the courtiers addressed him and the way
Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of him to the Emperor, but above all from
a certain desperation in Pfuel’s own expressions, it was clear that the others
knew, and Pfuel himself felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-
confidence and grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly
brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he concealed the
fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was evidently in despair that the
sole remaining chance of verifying his theory by a huge experiment and proving
its soundness to the whole world was slipping away from him.
The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted the more
heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and personalities, and the less
was it possible to arrive at any general conclusion from all that had been said.
Prince Andrew, listening to this polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans,
refutations, and shouts, felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A
thought that had long since and often occurred to him during his military
activities—the idea that there is not and cannot be any science of war, and that
therefore there can be no such thing as a military genius—now appeared to him
an obvious truth. “What theory and science is possible about a matter the
conditions and circumstances of which are unknown and cannot be defined,
especially when the strength of the acting forces cannot be ascertained? No one
was or is able to foresee in what condition our or the enemy’s armies will be in a
day’s time, and no one can gauge the force of this or that detachment. Sometimes
—when there is not a coward at the front to shout, ‘We are cut off!’ and start
running, but a brave and jolly lad who shouts, ‘Hurrah!’—a detachment of five
thousand is worth thirty thousand, as at Schön Grabern, while at times fifty
thousand run from eight thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in
a matter in which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined and
everything depends on innumerable conditions, the significance of which is
determined at a particular moment which arrives no one knows when? Armfeldt
says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci says we have got the French army
between two fires; Michaud says that the worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies
in having the river behind it, and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength;
Toll proposes one plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and
the advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial. And
why do they all speak of a ‘military genius’? Is a man a genius who can order
bread to be brought up at the right time and say who is to go to the right and who
to the left? It is only because military men are invested with pomp and power
and crowds of sychophants flatter power, attributing to it qualities of genius it
does not possess. The best generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid
or absent-minded men. Bagratión was the best, Napoleon himself admitted that.
And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied face on the field
of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander not need any special
qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human
attributes—love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should
be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise
he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God
forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and
unjust. It is understandable that a theory of their ‘genius’ was invented for them
long ago because they have power! The success of a military action depends not
on them, but on the man in the ranks who shouts, ‘We are lost!’ or who shouts,
‘Hurrah!’ And only in the ranks can one serve with assurance of being useful.”
So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he roused himself
only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving.
At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he would
like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court circles forever by not
asking to remain attached to the sovereign’s person, but for permission to serve
in the army.
CHAPTER XII
Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostóv had received a letter from his
parents in which they told him briefly of Natásha’s illness and the breaking off
of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they explained by Natásha’s having
rejected him) and again asked Nicholas to retire from the army and return home.
On receiving this letter, Nicholas did not even make any attempt to get leave of
absence or to retire from the army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry
Natásha was ill and her engagement broken off, and that he would do all he
could to meet their wishes. To Sónya he wrote separately.
“Adored friend of my soul!” he wrote. “Nothing but honor could keep me
from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of the campaign, I
should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades’ eyes but in my own, if I
preferred my own happiness to my love and duty to the Fatherland. But this shall
be our last separation. Believe me, directly the war is over, if I am still alive and
still loved by you, I will throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever
to my ardent breast.”
It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that prevented Rostóv
from returning home as he had promised and marrying Sónya. The autumn in
Otrádnoe with the hunting, and the winter with the Christmas holidays and
Sónya’s love, had opened out to him a vista of tranquil rural joys and peace such
as he had never known before, and which now allured him. “A splendid wife,
children, a good pack of hounds, a dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture,
neighbors, service by election...” thought he. But now the campaign was
beginning, and he had to remain with his regiment. And since it had to be so,
Nicholas Rostóv, as was natural to him, felt contented with the life he led in the
regiment and was able to find pleasure in that life.
On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully welcomed by
his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back from the Ukraine
excellent horses which pleased him and earned him commendation from his
commanders. During his absence he had been promoted captain, and when the
regiment was put on war footing with an increase in numbers, he was again
allotted his old squadron.
The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double pay, new
officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody was infected with
the merrily excited mood that goes with the commencement of a war, and
Rostóv, conscious of his advantageous position in the regiment, devoted himself
entirely to the pleasures and interests of military service, though he knew that
sooner or later he would have to relinquish them.
The troops retired from Vílna for various complicated reasons of state,
political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was accompanied by a
complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and passions at headquarters. For
the Pávlograd hussars, however, the whole of this retreat during the finest period
of summer and with sufficient supplies was a very simple and agreeable
business.
It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness, and
intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves where they were
going or why. If they regretted having to retreat, it was only because they had to
leave billets they had grown accustomed to, or some pretty young Polish lady. If
the thought that things looked bad chanced to enter anyone’s head, he tried to be
as cheerful as befits a good soldier and not to think of the general trend of
affairs, but only of the task nearest to hand. First they camped gaily before Vílna,
making acquaintance with the Polish landowners, preparing for reviews and
being reviewed by the Emperor and other high commanders. Then came an order
to retreat to Sventsyáni and destroy any provisions they could not carry away
with them. Sventsyáni was remembered by the hussars only as the drunken
camp, a name the whole army gave to their encampment there, and because
many complaints were made against the troops, who, taking advantage of the
order to collect provisions, took also horses, carriages, and carpets from the
Polish proprietors. Rostóv remembered Sventsyáni, because on the first day of
their arrival at that small town he changed his sergeant major and was unable to
manage all the drunken men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had
appropriated five barrels of old beer. From Sventsyáni they retired farther and
farther to Drissa, and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier of
Russia proper.
On the thirteenth of July the Pávlograds took part in a serious action for the
first time.
On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy storm of
rain and hail. In general, the summer of 1812 was remarkable for its storms.
The two Pávlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye, which was
already in ear but had been completely trodden down by cattle and horses. The
rain was descending in torrents, and Rostóv, with a young officer named Ilyín,
his protégé, was sitting in a hastily constructed shelter. An officer of their
regiment, with long mustaches extending onto his cheeks, who after riding to the
staff had been overtaken by the rain, entered Rostóv’s shelter.
“I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raévski’s exploit?”
And the officer gave them details of the Saltánov battle, which he had heard at
the staff.
Rostóv, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water trickled
down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional glance at Ilyín, who was
pressing close to him. This officer, a lad of sixteen who had recently joined the
regiment, was now in the same relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to
Denísov seven years before. Ilyín tried to imitate Rostóv in everything and
adored him as a girl might have done.
Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke grandiloquently of the
Saltánov dam being “a Russian Thermopylae,” and of how a deed worthy of
antiquity had been performed by General Raévski. He recounted how Raévski
had led his two sons onto the dam under terrific fire and had charged with them
beside him. Rostóv heard the story and not only said nothing to encourage
Zdrzhinski’s enthusiasm but, on the contrary, looked like a man ashamed of what
he was hearing, though with no intention of contradicting it. Since the campaigns
of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostóv knew by experience that men always lie when
describing military exploits, as he himself had done when recounting them;
besides that, he had experience enough to know that nothing happens in war at
all as we can imagine or relate it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski’s tale, nor
did he like Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches extending over his
cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and crowded
Rostóv in the narrow shanty. Rostóv looked at him in silence. “In the first place,
there must have been such a confusion and crowding on the dam that was being
attacked that if Raévski did lead his sons there, it could have had no effect
except perhaps on some dozen men nearest to him,” thought he, “the rest could
not have seen how or with whom Raévski came onto the dam. And even those
who did see it would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had they to
do with Raévski’s tender paternal feelings when their own skins were in danger?
And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did not depend on whether they took the
Saltánov dam or not, as we are told was the case at Thermopylae. So why should
he have made such a sacrifice? And why expose his own children in the battle? I
would not have taken my brother Pétya there, or even Ilyín, who’s a stranger to
me but a nice lad, but would have tried to put them somewhere under cover,”
Nicholas continued to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But he did not express
his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had gained experience. He knew that
this tale redounded to the glory of our arms and so one had to pretend not to
doubt it. And he acted accordingly.
“I can’t stand this any more,” said Ilyín, noticing that Rostóv did not relish
Zdrzhinski’s conversation. “My stockings and shirt... and the water is running on
my seat! I’ll go and look for shelter. The rain seems less heavy.”
Ilyín went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.
Five minutes later Ilyín, splashing through the mud, came running back to the
shanty.
“Hurrah! Rostóv, come quick! I’ve found it! About two hundred yards away
there’s a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can at least get dry there,
and Mary Hendríkhovna’s there.”
Mary Hendríkhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty young
German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether from lack of
means or because he did not like to part from his young wife in the early days of
their marriage, took her about with him wherever the hussar regiment went and
his jealousy had become a standing joke among the hussar officers.
Rostóv threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrúshka to follow
with the things, and—now slipping in the mud, now splashing right through it—
set off with Ilyín in the lessening rain and the darkness that was occasionally rent
by distant lightning.
“Rostóv, where are you?”
“Here. What lightning!” they called to one another.
CHAPTER XIII
In the tavern, before which stood the doctor’s covered cart, there were already
some five officers. Mary Hendríkhovna, a plump little blonde German, in a
dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a broad bench in the front corner.
Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep behind her. Rostóv and Ilyín, on entering the
room, were welcomed with merry shouts and laughter.
“Dear me, how jolly we are!” said Rostóv laughing.
“And why do you stand there gaping?”
“What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don’t make our
drawing room so wet.”
“Don’t mess Mary Hendríkhovna’s dress!” cried other voices.
Rostóv and Ilyín hastened to find a corner where they could change into dry
clothes without offending Mary Hendríkhovna’s modesty. They were going into
a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but found it completely filled by three
officers who sat playing cards by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box,
and these officers would on no account yield their position. Mary Hendríkhovna
obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and behind that
screen Rostóv and Ilyín, helped by Lavrúshka who had brought their kits,
changed their wet things for dry ones.
A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was found, fixed
on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small samovar was produced
and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and having asked Mary Hendríkhovna to
preside, they all crowded round her. One offered her a clean handkerchief to
wipe her charming hands, another spread a jacket under her little feet to keep
them from the damp, another hung his coat over the window to keep out the
draft, and yet another waved the flies off her husband’s face, lest he should wake
up.
“Leave him alone,” said Mary Hendríkhovna, smiling timidly and happily.
“He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night.”
“Oh, no, Mary Hendríkhovna,” replied the officer, “one must look after the
doctor. Perhaps he’ll take pity on me someday, when it comes to cutting off a leg
or an arm for me.”
There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one could not
make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar held only six
tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter to take turns in order of
seniority to receive one’s tumbler from Mary Hendríkhovna’s plump little hands
with their short and not overclean nails. All the officers appeared to be, and
really were, in love with her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the
partition soon left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the
general mood of courting Mary Hendríkhovna. She, seeing herself surrounded
by such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with satisfaction, try as she
might to hide it, and perturbed as she evidently was each time her husband
moved in his sleep behind her.
There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything else, but it
took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary Hendríkhovna should stir
the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostóv received his tumbler, and adding some
rum to it asked Mary Hendríkhovna to stir it.
“But you take it without sugar?” she said, smiling all the time, as if everything
she said and everything the others said was very amusing and had a double
meaning.
“It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should stir my tea.”
Mary Hendríkhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which someone
meanwhile had pounced on.
“Use your finger, Mary Hendríkhovna, it will be still nicer,” said Rostóv.
“Too hot!” she replied, blushing with pleasure.
Ilyín put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it to Mary
Hendríkhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.
“This is my cup,” said he. “Only dip your finger in it and I’ll drink it all up.”
When they had emptied the samovar, Rostóv took a pack of cards and
proposed that they should play “Kings” with Mary Hendríkhovna. They drew
lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostóv’s suggestion it was agreed
that whoever became “King” should have the right to kiss Mary Hendríkhovna’s
hand, and that the “Booby” should go to refill and reheat the samovar for the
doctor when the latter awoke.
“Well, but supposing Mary Hendríkhovna is ‘King’?” asked Ilyín.
“As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!”
They had hardly begun to play before the doctor’s disheveled head suddenly
appeared from behind Mary Hendríkhovna. He had been awake for some time,
listening to what was being said, and evidently found nothing entertaining or
amusing in what was going on. His face was sad and depressed. Without
greeting the officers, he scratched himself and asked to be allowed to pass as
they were blocking the way. As soon as he had left the room all the officers burst
into loud laughter and Mary Hendríkhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears
and thereby became still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard, the
doctor told his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and looked at him in
alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had ceased and they must go to sleep
in their covered cart, or everything in it would be stolen.
“But I’ll send an orderly.... Two of them!” said Rostóv. “What an idea,
doctor!”
“I’ll stand guard on it myself!” said Ilyín.
“No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for two nights,”
replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his wife, waiting for the
game to end.
Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers grew still
merrier, and some of them could not refrain from laughter, for which they
hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When he had gone, taking his wife with him,
and had settled down with her in their covered cart, the officers lay down in the
tavern, covering themselves with their wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a
long time; now they exchanged remarks, recalling the doctor’s uneasiness and
his wife’s delight, now they ran out into the porch and reported what was taking
place in the covered trap. Several times Rostóv, covering his head, tried to go to
sleep, but some remark would arouse him and conversation would be resumed,
to the accompaniment of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.
CHAPTER XIV
It was nearly three o’clock but no one was yet asleep, when the quartermaster
appeared with an order to move on to the little town of Ostróvna. Still laughing
and talking, the officers began hurriedly getting ready and again boiled some
muddy water in the samovar. But Rostóv went off to his squadron without
waiting for tea. Day was breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were
dispersing. It felt damp and cold, especially in clothes that were still moist. As
they left the tavern in the twilight of the dawn, Rostóv and Ilyín both glanced
under the wet and glistening leather hood of the doctor’s cart, from under the
apron of which his feet were sticking out, and in the middle of which his wife’s
nightcap was visible and her sleepy breathing audible.
“She really is a dear little thing,” said Rostóv to Ilyín, who was following him.
“A charming woman!” said Ilyín, with all the gravity of a boy of sixteen.
Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The command was
heard to “mount” and the soldiers crossed themselves and mounted. Rostóv
riding in front gave the order “Forward!” and the hussars, with clanking sabers
and subdued talk, their horses’ hoofs splashing in the mud, defiled in fours and
moved along the broad road planted with birch trees on each side, following the
infantry and a battery that had gone on in front.
Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding before the
wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly grass which always grows by
country roadsides became clearly visible, still wet with the night’s rain; the
drooping branches of the birches, also wet, swayed in the wind and flung down
bright drops of water to one side. The soldiers’ faces were more and more clearly
visible. Rostóv, always closely followed by Ilyín, rode along the side of the road
between two rows of birch trees.
When campaigning, Rostóv allowed himself the indulgence of riding not a
regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a sportsman, he had lately
procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome, Donéts horse, dun-colored, with light
mane and tail, and when he rode it no one could outgallop him. To ride this horse
was a pleasure to him, and he thought of the horse, of the morning, of the
doctor’s wife, but not once of the impending danger.
Formerly, when going into action, Rostóv had felt afraid; now he had not the
least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had grown used to being
under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but because he had learned how to
manage his thoughts when in danger. He had grown accustomed when going into
action to think about anything but what would seem most likely to interest him
—the impending danger. During the first period of his service, hard as he tried
and much as he reproached himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do
this, but with time it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyín under the birch
trees, occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met his hand, sometimes
touching his horse’s side with his foot, or, without turning round, handing a pipe
he had finished to an hussar riding behind him, with as calm and careless an air
as though he were merely out for a ride. He glanced with pity at the excited face
of Ilyín, who talked much and in great agitation. He knew from experience the
tormenting expectation of terror and death the cornet was suffering and knew
that only time could help him.
As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the clouds, the
wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the summer morning after the
storm; drops still continued to fall, but vertically now, and all was still. The
whole sun appeared on the horizon and disappeared behind a long narrow cloud
that hung above it. A few minutes later it reappeared brighter still from behind
the top of the cloud, tearing its edge. Everything grew bright and glittered. And
with that light, and as if in reply to it, came the sound of guns ahead of them.
Before Rostóv had had time to consider and determine the distance of that
firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstóy’s adjutant came galloping from Vítebsk with
orders to advance at a trot along the road.
The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery—which had
also quickened their pace—rode down a hill, and passing through an empty and
deserted village again ascended. The horses began to lather and the men to flush.
“Halt! Dress your ranks!” the order of the regimental commander was heard
ahead. “Forward by the left. Walk, march!” came the order from in front.
And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left flank of our
position, halted behind our Uhlans who were in the front line. To the right stood
our infantry in a dense column: they were the reserve. Higher up the hill, on the
very horizon, our guns were visible through the wonderfully clear air, brightly
illuminated by slanting morning sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could
be seen the enemy’s columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in action,
could be heard briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in the dale.
At these sounds, long unheard, Rostóv’s spirits rose, as at the strains of the
merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots, now together, now several
quickly one after another. Again all was silent and then again it sounded as if
someone were walking on detonators and exploding them.
The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A cannonade
began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the squadron, halted,
spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode up the hill to the guns.
After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the Uhlans.
“Form column! Prepare to charge!”
The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the cavalry to pass.
The Uhlans started, the streamers on their spears fluttering, and trotted downhill
toward the French cavalry which was seen below to the left.
As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered up the hill
to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by the Uhlans, bullets
came from the front, whining and whistling, but fell spent without taking effect.
The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more pleasurable
and exhilarating effect on Rostóv than the previous sounds of firing. Drawing
himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening out before him from the hill,
and with his whole soul followed the movement of the Uhlans. They swooped
down close to the French dragoons, something confused happened there amid
the smoke, and five minutes later our Uhlans were galloping back, not to the
place they had occupied but more to the left, and among the orange-colored
Uhlans on chestnut horses and behind them, in a large group, blue French
dragoons on gray horses could be seen.
CHAPTER XV
Rostóv, with his keen sportsman’s eye, was one of the first to catch sight of
these blue French dragoons pursuing our Uhlans. Nearer and nearer in disorderly
crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons pursuing them. He could
already see how these men, who looked so small at the foot of the hill, jostled
and overtook one another, waving their arms and their sabers in the air.
Rostóv gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He felt
instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons now, the latter
could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be made it must be done now, at
that very moment, or it would be too late. He looked around. A captain, standing
beside him, was gazing like himself with eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.
“Andrew Sevastyánych!” said Rostóv. “You know, we could crush them....”
“A fine thing too!” replied the captain, “and really...”
Rostóv, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped to the
front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish giving the word of
command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling, was following him. Rostóv
himself did not know how or why he did it. He acted as he did when hunting,
without reflecting or considering. He saw the dragoons near and that they were
galloping in disorder; he knew they could not withstand an attack—knew there
was only that moment and that if he let it slip it would not return. The bullets
were whining and whistling so stimulatingly around him and his horse was so
eager to go that he could not restrain himself. He touched his horse, gave the
word of command, and immediately, hearing behind him the tramp of the horses
of his deployed squadron, rode at full trot downhill toward the dragoons. Hardly
had they reached the bottom of the hill before their pace instinctively changed to
a gallop, which grew faster and faster as they drew nearer to our Uhlans and the
French dragoons who galloped after them. The dragoons were now close at
hand. On seeing the hussars, the foremost began to turn, while those behind
began to halt. With the same feeling with which he had galloped across the path
of a wolf, Rostóv gave rein to his Donéts horse and galloped to intersect the path
of the dragoons’ disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot
flung himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless horse
fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were galloping back.
Rostóv, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed after him. On the way he came
upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared it, and almost before he had righted
himself in his saddle he saw that he would immediately overtake the enemy he
had selected. That Frenchman, by his uniform an officer, was going at a gallop,
crouching on his gray horse and urging it on with his saber. In another moment
Rostóv’s horse dashed its breast against the hindquarters of the officer’s horse,
almost knocking it over, and at the same instant Rostóv, without knowing why,
raised his saber and struck the Frenchman with it.
The instant he had done this, all Rostóv’s animation vanished. The officer fell,
not so much from the blow—which had but slightly cut his arm above the elbow
—as from the shock to his horse and from fright. Rostóv reined in his horse, and
his eyes sought his foe to see whom he had vanquished. The French dragoon
officer was hopping with one foot on the ground, the other being caught in the
stirrup. His eyes, screwed up with fear as if he every moment expected another
blow, gazed up at Rostóv with shrinking terror. His pale and mud-stained face—
fair and young, with a dimple in the chin and light-blue eyes—was not an
enemy’s face at all suited to a battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face.
Before Rostóv had decided what to do with him, the officer cried, “I surrender!”
He hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the stirrup and did not remove
his frightened blue eyes from Rostóv’s face. Some hussars who galloped up
disengaged his foot and helped him into the saddle. On all sides, the hussars
were busy with the dragoons; one was wounded, but though his face was
bleeding, he would not give up his horse; another was perched up behind an
hussar with his arms round him; a third was being helped by an hussar to mount
his horse. In front, the French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars
galloped hastily back with their prisoners. Rostóv galloped back with the rest,
aware of an unpleasant feeling of depression in his heart. Something vague and
confused, which he could not at all account for, had come over him with the
capture of that officer and the blow he had dealt him.
Count Ostermann-Tolstóy met the returning hussars, sent for Rostóv, thanked
him, and said he would report his gallant deed to the Emperor and would
recommend him for a St. George’s Cross. When sent for by Count Ostermann,
Rostóv, remembering that he had charged without orders, felt sure his
commander was sending for him to punish him for breach of discipline.
Ostermann’s flattering words and promise of a reward should therefore have
struck him all the more pleasantly, but he still felt that same vaguely
disagreeable feeling of moral nausea. “But what on earth is worrying me?” he
asked himself as he rode back from the general. “Ilyín? No, he’s safe. Have I
disgraced myself in any way? No, that’s not it.” Something else, resembling
remorse, tormented him. “Yes, oh yes, that French officer with the dimple. And I
remember how my arm paused when I raised it.”
Rostóv saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to have a
look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was sitting in his foreign
uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked anxiously about him. The sword cut
on his arm could scarcely be called a wound. He glanced at Rostóv with a
feigned smile and waved his hand in greeting. Rostóv still had the same
indefinite feeling, as of shame.
All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that Rostóv,
without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and preoccupied. He drank
reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept turning something over in his mind.
Rostóv was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his, which to his
amazement had gained him the St. George’s Cross and even given him a
reputation for bravery, and there was something he could not at all understand.
“So others are even more afraid than I am!” he thought. “So that’s all there is in
what is called heroism! And did I do it for my country’s sake? And how was he
to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He
thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand trembled. And
they have given me a St. George’s Cross.... I can’t make it out at all.”
But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could reach no
clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune in the service, as
often happens, turned in his favor. After the affair at Ostróvna he was brought
into notice, received command of an hussar battalion, and when a brave officer
was needed he was chosen.
CHAPTER XVI
On receiving news of Natásha’s illness, the countess, though not quite well yet
and still weak, went to Moscow with Pétya and the rest of the household, and the
whole family moved from Márya Dmítrievna’s house to their own and settled
down in town.
Natásha’s illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for her parents,
the consideration of all that had caused the illness, her conduct and the breaking
off of her engagement, receded into the background. She was so ill that it was
impossible for them to consider in how far she was to blame for what had
happened. She could not eat or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the
doctors made them feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but
how to help her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked much
in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and prescribed a great variety
of medicines for all the diseases known to them, but the simple idea never
occurred to any of them that they could not know the disease Natásha was
suffering from, as no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every
living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar,
personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine—not a disease of the
lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a
disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of
those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot
occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of
their lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best
years of their lives on that business. But, above all, that thought was kept out of
their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful, as in fact they were
to the whole Rostóv family. Their usefulness did not depend on making the
patient swallow substances for the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely
perceptible, as they were given in small doses), but they were useful, necessary,
and indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of
those who loved her—and that is why there are, and always will be, pseudo-
healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied that eternal
human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done,
which is felt by those who are suffering. They satisfied the need seen in its most
elementary form in a child, when it wants to have a place rubbed that has been
hurt. A child knocks itself and runs at once to the arms of its mother or nurse to
have the aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better when this is done. The
child cannot believe that the strongest and wisest of its people have no remedy
for its pain, and the hope of relief and the expression of its mother’s sympathy
while she rubs the bump comforts it. The doctors were of use to Natásha because
they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soon pass if only the
coachman went to the chemist’s in the Arbát and got a powder and some pills in
a pretty box for a ruble and seventy kopeks, and if she took those powders in
boiled water at intervals of precisely two hours, neither more nor less.
What would Sónya and the count and countess have done, how would they
have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been those pills to give
by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken cutlets, and all the other details of life
ordered by the doctors, the carrying out of which supplied an occupation and
consolation to the family circle? How would the count have borne his dearly
loved daughter’s illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousand
rubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to benefit her, or had he not
known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yet other thousands and
would take her abroad for consultations there, and had he not been able to
explain the details of how Métivier and Feller had not understood the symptoms,
but Frise had, and Múdrov had diagnosed them even better? What would the
countess have done had she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not
strictly obeying the doctor’s orders?
“You’ll never get well like that,” she would say, forgetting her grief in her
vexation, “if you won’t obey the doctor and take your medicine at the right time!
You mustn’t trifle with it, you know, or it may turn to pneumonia,” she would go
on, deriving much comfort from the utterance of that foreign word,
incomprehensible to others as well as to herself.
What would Sónya have done without the glad consciousness that she had not
undressed during the first three nights, in order to be ready to carry out all the
doctor’s injunctions with precision, and that she still kept awake at night so as
not to miss the proper time when the slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box
had to be administered? Even to Natásha herself it was pleasant to see that so
many sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that she had to take
medicine at certain hours, though she declared that no medicine would cure her
and that it was all nonsense. And it was even pleasant to be able to show, by
disregarding the orders, that she did not believe in medical treatment and did not
value her life.
The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and regardless
of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he had gone into another
room, to which the countess hurriedly followed him, he assumed a grave air and
thoughtfully shaking his head said that though there was danger, he had hopes of
the effect of this last medicine and one must wait and see, that the malady was
chiefly mental, but... And the countess, trying to conceal the action from herself
and from him, slipped a gold coin into his hand and always returned to the
patient with a more tranquil mind.
The symptoms of Natásha’s illness were that she ate little, slept little,
coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that she could not get on
without medical treatment, so they kept her in the stifling atmosphere of the
town, and the Rostóvs did not move to the country that summer of 1812.
In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders out of the
little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was fond of such things
made a large collection, and in spite of being deprived of the country life to
which she was accustomed, youth prevailed. Natásha’s grief began to be overlaid
by the impressions of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it
gradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically.
CHAPTER XVII
Natásha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all external forms
of pleasure—balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters—but she never laughed
without a sound of tears in her laughter. She could not sing. As soon as she
began to laugh, or tried to sing by herself, tears choked her: tears of remorse,
tears at the recollection of those pure times which could never return, tears of
vexation that she should so uselessly have ruined her young life which might
have been so happy. Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a
blasphemy, in face of her sorrow. Without any need of self-restraint, no wish to
coquet ever entered her head. She said and felt at that time that no man was more
to her than Nastásya Ivánovna, the buffoon. Something stood sentinel within her
and forbade her every joy. Besides, she had lost all the old interests of her
carefree girlish life that had been so full of hope. The previous autumn, the
hunting, “Uncle,” and the Christmas holidays spent with Nicholas at Otrádnoe
were what she recalled oftenest and most painfully. What would she not have
given to bring back even a single day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her
presentiment at the time had not deceived her—that that state of freedom and
readiness for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live
on.
It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had formerly
imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the world. But this was
not enough. She knew that, and asked herself, “What next?” But there was
nothing to come. There was no joy in life, yet life was passing. Natásha
apparently tried not to be a burden or a hindrance to anyone, but wanted nothing
for herself. She kept away from everyone in the house and felt at ease only with
her brother Pétya. She liked to be with him better than with the others, and when
alone with him she sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left the house and of
those who came to see them was glad to see only one person, Pierre. It would
have been impossible to treat her with more delicacy, greater care, and at the
same time more seriously than did Count Bezúkhov. Natásha unconsciously felt
this delicacy and so found great pleasure in his society. But she was not even
grateful to him for it; nothing good on Pierre’s part seemed to her to be an effort,
it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there was no merit in his
kindness. Sometimes Natásha noticed embarrassment and awkwardness on his
part in her presence, especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or
feared that something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her.
She noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and shyness, which she
imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was to her. After those
involuntary words—that if he were free he would have asked on his knees for
her hand and her love—uttered at a moment when she was so strongly agitated,
Pierre never spoke to Natásha of his feelings; and it seemed plain to her that
those words, which had then so comforted her, were spoken as all sorts of
meaningless words are spoken to comfort a crying child. It was not because
Pierre was a married man, but because Natásha felt very strongly with him that
moral barrier the absence of which she had experienced with Kurágin that it
never entered her head that the relations between him and herself could lead to
love on her part, still less on his, or even to the kind of tender, self-conscious,
romantic friendship between a man and a woman of which she had known
several instances.
Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agraféna Ivánovna Belóva, a country
neighbor of the Rostóvs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions at the shrines of
the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natásha should fast and prepare for Holy
Communion, and Natásha gladly welcomed the idea. Despite the doctor’s orders
that she should not go out early in the morning, Natásha insisted on fasting and
preparing for the sacrament, not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostóv
family by attending three services in their own house, but as Agraféna Ivánovna
did, by going to church every day for a week and not once missing Vespers,
Matins, or Mass.
The countess was pleased with Natásha’s zeal; after the poor results of the
medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that prayer might help
her daughter more than medicines and, though not without fear and concealing it
from the doctor, she agreed to Natásha’s wish and entrusted her to Belóva.
Agraféna Ivánovna used to come to wake Natásha at three in the morning, but
generally found her already awake. She was afraid of being late for Matins.
Hastily washing, and meekly putting on her shabbiest dress and an old mantilla,
Natásha, shivering in the fresh air, went out into the deserted streets lit by the
clear light of dawn. By Agraféna Ivánovna’s advice Natásha prepared herself not
in their own parish, but at a church where, according to the devout Agraféna
Ivánovna, the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were never
many people in the church; Natásha always stood beside Belóva in the
customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the screen before
the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her, of humility before something
great and incomprehensible, seized her when at that unusual morning hour,
gazing at the dark face of the Virgin illuminated by the candles burning before it
and by the morning light falling from the window, she listened to the words of
the service which she tried to follow with understanding. When she understood
them her personal feeling became interwoven in the prayers with shades of its
own. When she did not understand, it was sweeter still to think that the wish to
understand everything is pride, that it is impossible to understand all, that it is
only necessary to believe and to commit oneself to God, whom she felt guiding
her soul at those moments. She crossed herself, bowed low, and when she did
not understand, in horror at her own vileness, simply asked God to forgive her
everything, everything, to have mercy upon her. The prayers to which she
surrendered herself most of all were those of repentance. On her way home at an
early hour when she met no one but bricklayers going to work or men sweeping
the street, and everybody within the houses was still asleep, Natásha experienced
a feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility of correcting her faults, the
possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness.
During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every day. And
the happiness of taking communion, or “communing” as Agraféna Ivánovna,
joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natásha so great that she felt
she should never live till that blessed Sunday.
But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when, dressed in
white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the first time for many
months she felt calm and not oppressed by the thought of the life that lay before
her.
The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue the powders
he had prescribed a fortnight previously.
“She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening,” said he,
evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. “Only, please be particular about
it.
“Be quite easy,” he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the gold coin in his
palm. “She will soon be singing and frolicking about. The last medicine has
done her a very great deal of good. She has freshened up very much.”
The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at her nails
and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing room.
CHAPTER XVIII
At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the war
began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the Emperor to the
people, and of his coming himself from the army to Moscow. And as up to the
eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had been received, exaggerated reports
became current about them and about the position of Russia. It was said that the
Emperor was leaving the army because it was in danger, it was said that
Smolénsk had surrendered, that Napoleon had an army of a million and only a
miracle could save Russia.
On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was received but
was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the Rostóvs’, promised to come to
dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a copy of the manifesto and appeal, which he
would obtain from Count Rostopchín.
That Sunday, the Rostóvs went to Mass at the Razumóvskis’ private chapel as
usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o’clock, when the Rostóvs got out of
their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air, the shouts of hawkers, the light and gay
summer clothes of the crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the
sounds of the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the
rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot sunshine were all
full of that summer languor, that content and discontent with the present, which
is most strongly felt on a bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow notabilities, all
the Rostóvs’ acquaintances, were at the Razumóvskis’ chapel, for, as if expecting
something to happen, many wealthy families who usually left town for their
country estates had not gone away that summer. As Natásha, at her mother’s
side, passed through the crowd behind a liveried footman who cleared the way
for them, she heard a young man speaking about her in too loud a whisper.
“That’s Rostóva, the one who...”
“She’s much thinner, but all the same she’s pretty!”
She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kurágin and Bolkónski. But she
was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that everyone who looked at
her was thinking only of what had happened to her. With a sinking heart,
wretched as she always was now when she found herself in a crowd, Natásha in
her lilac silk dress trimmed with black lace walked—as women can walk—with
the more repose and stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul. She
knew for certain that she was pretty, but this no longer gave her satisfaction as it
used to. On the contrary it tormented her more than anything else of late, and
particularly so on this bright, hot summer day in town. “It’s Sunday again—
another week past,” she thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday
before, “and always the same life that is no life, and the same surroundings in
which it used to be so easy to live. I’m pretty, I’m young, and I know that now I
am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good,” she thought, “but yet my
best years are slipping by and are no good to anyone.” She stood by her mother’s
side and exchanged nods with acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized
the ladies’ dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was
not crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she thought
with vexation that she was herself being judged and was judging others, and
suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt horrified at her own vileness,
horrified that the former purity of her soul was again lost to her.
A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that mild
solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the souls of the
worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were closed, the curtain was
slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft mysterious voice pronounced some
words. Tears, the cause of which she herself did not understand, made Natásha’s
breast heave, and a joyous but oppressive feeling agitated her.
“Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good
forever, forever!” she pleaded.
The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen and, holding
his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his dalmatic and, making the
sign of the cross on his breast, began in a loud and solemn voice to recite the
words of the prayer....
“In peace let us pray unto the Lord.”
“As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity, united by
brotherly love—let us pray!” thought Natásha.
“For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our souls.”
“For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us,” prayed
Natásha.
When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and Denísov.
When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she remembered Prince
Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her all the wrongs she had
done him. When they prayed for those who love us, she prayed for the members
of her own family, her father and mother and Sónya, realizing for the first time
how wrongly she had acted toward them, and feeling all the strength of her love
for them. When they prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of her
enemies and people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She included
among her enemies the creditors and all who had business dealings with her
father, and always at the thought of enemies and those who hated her she
remembered Anatole who had done her so much harm—and though he did not
hate her she gladly prayed for him as for an enemy. Only at prayer did she feel
able to think clearly and calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole, as men for
whom her feelings were as nothing compared with her awe and devotion to God.
When they prayed for the Imperial family and the Synod, she bowed very low
and made the sign of the cross, saying to herself that even if she did not
understand, still she could not doubt, and at any rate loved the governing Synod
and prayed for it.
When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over his breast
and said, “Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to Christ the Lord!”
“Commit ourselves to God,” Natásha inwardly repeated. “Lord God, I submit
myself to Thy will!” she thought. “I want nothing, wish for nothing; teach me
what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take me!” prayed Natásha, with
impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing herself but letting her slender arms
hang down as if expecting some invisible power at any moment to take her and
deliver her from herself, from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.
The countess looked round several times at her daughter’s softened face and
shining eyes and prayed God to help her.
Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual order Natásha
knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool, the one he knelt on when
praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it before the doors of the sanctuary
screen. The priest came out with his purple velvet biretta on his head, adjusted
his hair, and knelt down with an effort. Everybody followed his example and
they looked at one another in surprise. Then came the prayer just received from
the Synod—a prayer for the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.
“Lord God of might, God of our salvation!” began the priest in that voice,
clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the Slav clergy read and which
acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.
“Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and
blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and have
mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay waste the whole
world, rises against us; these lawless men are gathered together to overthrow
Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear Jerusalem, Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy
temples, to overthrow Thine altars, and to desecrate our holy shrines. How long,
O Lord, how long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful
power?
“Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might our
most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pávlovich; be mindful of
his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to his righteousness, and let
it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless his counsels, his undertakings, and his
work; strengthen his kingdom by Thine almighty hand, and give him victory
over his enemy, even as Thou gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon
over Midian, and David over Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in
the hands of those who have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins
with strength for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to help us;
confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against us, may they be
before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust before the wind, and may Thy
mighty Angel confound them and put them to flight; may they be ensnared when
they know it not, and may the plots they have laid in secret be turned against
them; let them fall before Thy servants’ feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord,
Thou art able to save both great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot
prevail against Thee!
“God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and loving-kindness
which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us, but be gracious to our
unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy many mercies regard not our
transgressions and iniquities! Create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit
within us, strengthen us all in Thy faith, fortify our hope, inspire us with true
love one for another, arm us with unity of spirit in the righteous defense of the
heritage Thou gavest to us and to our fathers, and let not the scepter of the
wicked be exalted against the destiny of those Thou hast sanctified.
“O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust, let us
not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token of Thy
blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see it and be put to
shame and perish, and may all the nations know that Thou art the Lord and we
are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this day, O Lord, and grant us Thy
salvation; make the hearts of Thy servants to rejoice in Thy mercy; smite down
our enemies and destroy them swiftly beneath the feet of Thy faithful servants!
For Thou art the defense, the succor, and the victory of them that put their trust
in Thee, and to Thee be all glory, to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, now and
forever, world without end. Amen.”
In Natásha’s receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her strongly. She
listened to every word about the victory of Moses over Amalek, of Gideon over
Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about the destruction of “Thy
Jerusalem,” and she prayed to God with the tenderness and emotion with which
her heart was overflowing, but without fully understanding what she was asking
of God in that prayer. She shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of
righteousness, for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope, and its
animation by love. But she could not pray that her enemies might be trampled
under foot when but a few minutes before she had been wishing she had more of
them that she might pray for them. But neither could she doubt the righteousness
of the prayer that was being read on bended knees. She felt in her heart a devout
and tremulous awe at the thought of the punishment that overtakes men for their
sins, and especially of her own sins, and she prayed to God to forgive them all,
and her too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and happiness. And it
seemed to her that God heard her prayer.
CHAPTER XIX
From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostóvs’ with Natásha’s grateful
look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that seemed to be fixed in the sky
and felt that something new was appearing on his own horizon—from that day
the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had
incessantly tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question
“Why?” “Wherefore?” which had come to him amid every occupation, was now
replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former question, but by her
image. When he listened to, or himself took part in, trivial conversations, when
he read or heard of human baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly,
and did not ask himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so
transient and incomprehensible—but he remembered her as he had last seen her,
and all his doubts vanished—not because she had answered the questions that
had haunted him, but because his conception of her transferred him instantly to
another, a brighter, realm of spiritual activity in which no one could be justified
or guilty—a realm of beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever
worldly baseness presented itself to him, he said to himself:
“Well, supposing N. N. has swindled the country and the Tsar, and the country
and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter? She smiled at me
yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her, and no one will ever know
it.” And his soul felt calm and peaceful.
Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same idle and
dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the Rostóvs’ there were
other hours he had to spend somehow, and the habits and acquaintances he had
made in Moscow formed a current that bore him along irresistibly. But latterly,
when more and more disquieting reports came from the seat of war and
Natásha’s health began to improve and she no longer aroused in him the former
feeling of careful pity, an ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not
explain, took possession of him. He felt that the condition he was in could not
continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which would change his whole life,
and he impatiently sought everywhere for signs of that approaching catastrophe.
One of his brother Masons had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy
concerning Napoleon, drawn from the Revelation of St. John.
In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the
beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore
and six.
And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:
And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies;
and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as the
Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the others tens, will have
the following significance:
a b c d e f g h i k
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
l m n o p q r s
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
t u v w x y
100 110 120 130 140 150
z
160
Writing the words L’Empereur Napoléon in numbers, it appears that the sum
of them is 666, and that Napoleon was therefore the beast foretold in the
Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the words quarante-
deux, * which was the term allowed to the beast that “spoke great things and
blasphemies,” the same number 666 was obtained; from which it followed that
the limit fixed for Napoleon’s power had come in the year 1812 when the French
emperor was forty-two. This prophecy pleased Pierre very much and he often
asked himself what would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of
Napoleon, and tried by the same system of using letters as numbers and adding
them up, to find an answer to the question that engrossed him. He wrote the
words L’Empereur Alexandre, La nation russe and added up their numbers, but
the sums were either more or less than 666. Once when making such calculations
he wrote down his own name in French, Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the sum of
the numbers did not come right. Then he changed the spelling, substituting a z
for the s and adding de and the article le, still without obtaining the desired
result. Then it occurred to him: if the answer to the question were contained in
his name, his nationality would also be given in the answer. So he wrote Le russe
Besuhof and adding up the numbers got 671. This was only five too much, and
five was represented by e, the very letter elided from the article le before the
word Empereur. By omitting the e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he
sought. L’russe Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him. How, or by what
means, he was connected with the great event foretold in the Apocalypse he did
not know, but he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His love for
Natásha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the comet, 666, L’Empereur
Napoléon, and L’russe Besuhof—all this had to mature and culminate, to lift him
out of that spellbound, petty sphere of Moscow habits in which he felt himself
held captive and lead him to a great achievement and great happiness.
* Forty-two.
On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre had
promised the Rostóvs to bring them, from Count Rostopchín whom he knew
well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the army. In the morning,
when he went to call at Rostopchín’s he met there a courier fresh from the army,
an acquaintance of his own, who often danced at Moscow balls.
“Do, please, for heaven’s sake, relieve me of something!” said the courier. “I
have a sackful of letters to parents.”
Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostóv to his father. Pierre took
that letter, and Rostopchín also gave him the Emperor’s appeal to Moscow,
which had just been printed, the last army orders, and his own most recent
bulletin. Glancing through the army orders, Pierre found in one of them, in the
lists of killed, wounded, and rewarded, the name of Nicholas Rostóv, awarded a
St. George’s Cross of the Fourth Class for courage shown in the Ostróvna affair,
and in the same order the name of Prince Andrew Bolkónski, appointed to the
command of a regiment of Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind the
Rostóvs of Bolkónski, Pierre could not refrain from making them happy by the
news of their son’s having received a decoration, so he sent that printed army
order and Nicholas’ letter to the Rostóvs, keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and
the other orders to take with him when he went to dinner.
His conversation with Count Rostopchín and the latter’s tone of anxious hurry,
the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how badly things were going
in the army, the rumors of the discovery of spies in Moscow and of a leaflet in
circulation stating that Napoleon promised to be in both the Russian capitals by
the autumn, and the talk of the Emperor’s being expected to arrive next day—all
aroused with fresh force that feeling of agitation and expectation in Pierre which
he had been conscious of ever since the appearance of the comet, and especially
since the beginning of the war.
He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done so had
he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society of Freemasons to
which he was bound by oath and which preached perpetual peace and the
abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact that when he saw the great mass of
Muscovites who had donned uniform and were talking patriotism, he somehow
felt ashamed to take the step. But the chief reason for not carrying out his
intention to enter the army lay in the vague idea that he was L’russe Besuhof
who had the number of the beast, 666; that his part in the great affair of setting a
limit to the power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous things had been
predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought not to undertake anything,
but wait for what was bound to come to pass.
CHAPTER XX
A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostóvs that day, as usual on
Sundays.
Pierre came early so as to find them alone.
He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had he not
been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried his bulk with evident
ease.
He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman did not
even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his master was at the
Rostóvs’ he stayed till midnight. The Rostóvs’ footman rushed eagerly forward
to help him off with his cloak and take his hat and stick. Pierre, from club habit,
always left both hat and stick in the anteroom.
The first person he saw in the house was Natásha. Even before he saw her,
while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing solfa exercises in the
music room. He knew that she had not sung since her illness, and so the sound of
her voice surprised and delighted him. He opened the door softly and saw her, in
the lilac dress she had worn at church, walking about the room singing. She had
her back to him when he opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his
broad, surprised face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him.
“I want to try to sing again,” she said, adding as if by way of excuse, “it is, at
least, something to do.”
“That’s capital!”
“How glad I am you’ve come! I am so happy today,” she said, with the old
animation Pierre had not seen in her for a long time. “You know Nicholas has
received a St. George’s Cross? I am so proud of him.”
“Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don’t want to interrupt you,” he
added, and was about to go to the drawing room.
Natásha stopped him.
“Count, is it wrong of me to sing?” she said blushing, and fixing her eyes
inquiringly on him.
“No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?”
“I don’t know myself,” Natásha answered quickly, “but I should not like to do
anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely. You don’t know how
important you are to me, how much you’ve done for me....” She spoke rapidly
and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her words. “I saw in that same army
order that he, Bolkónski” (she whispered the name hastily), “is in Russia, and in
the army again. What do you think?”—she was speaking hurriedly, evidently
afraid her strength might fail her—“Will he ever forgive me? Will he not always
have a bitter feeling toward me? What do you think? What do you think?”
“I think...” Pierre replied, “that he has nothing to forgive.... If I were in his
place...”
By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the day when,
trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not himself but the best man in
the world and free, he would ask on his knees for her hand; and the same feeling
of pity, tenderness, and love took possession of him and the same words rose to
his lips. But she did not give him time to say them.
“Yes, you... you...” she said, uttering the word you rapturously—“that’s a
different thing. I know no one kinder, more generous, or better than you; nobody
could be! Had you not been there then, and now too, I don’t know what would
have become of me, because...”
Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music before her
eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and down the room.
Just then Pétya came running in from the drawing room.
Pétya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips and resembled
Natásha. He was preparing to enter the university, but he and his friend
Obolénski had lately, in secret, agreed to join the hussars.
Pétya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this affair. He had
asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted in the hussars.
Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what Pétya was
saying.
Pétya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.
“Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirílych, for heaven’s sake! You are my
only hope,” said Pétya.
“Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I’ll mention it, I’ll bring it all up
today.”
“Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?” asked the old count. “The
countess has been to Mass at the Razumóvskis’ and heard the new prayer. She
says it’s very fine.”
“Yes, I’ve got it,” said Pierre. “The Emperor is to be here tomorrow... there’s
to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility, and they are talking of a levy of
ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me congratulate you!”
“Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?”
“We are again retreating. They say we’re already near Smolénsk,” replied
Pierre.
“O Lord, O Lord!” exclaimed the count. “Where is the manifesto?”
“The Emperor’s appeal? Oh yes!”
Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not find them.
Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the countess who entered the
room and glanced uneasily around, evidently expecting Natásha, who had left off
singing but had not yet come into the drawing room.
“On my word, I don’t know what I’ve done with it,” he said.
“There he is, always losing everything!” remarked the countess.
Natásha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face and sat down
looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered, Pierre’s features, which had
been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and while still searching for the papers he
glanced at her several times.
“No, really! I’ll drive home, I must have left them there. I’ll certainly...”
“But you’ll be late for dinner.”
“Oh! And my coachman has gone.”
But Sónya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom, had found
them in Pierre’s hat, where he had carefully tucked them under the lining. Pierre
was about to begin reading.
“No, after dinner,” said the old count, evidently expecting much enjoyment
from that reading.
At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new chevalier
of St. George, Shinshín told them the town news, of the illness of the old
Georgian princess, of Métivier’s disappearance from Moscow, and of how some
German fellow had been brought to Rostopchín and accused of being a French
“spyer” (so Count Rostopchín had told the story), and how Rostopchín let him
go and assured the people that he was “not a spire at all, but only an old German
ruin.”
“People are being arrested...” said the count. “I’ve told the countess she
should not speak French so much. It’s not the time for it now.”
“And have you heard?” Shinshín asked. “Prince Golítsyn has engaged a
master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak French in the
streets.”
“And how about you, Count Peter Kirílych? If they call up the militia, you too
will have to mount a horse,” remarked the old count, addressing Pierre.
Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming not to
grasp what was said. He looked at the count.
“Oh yes, the war,” he said. “No! What sort of warrior should I make? And yet
everything is so strange, so strange! I can’t make it out. I don’t know, I am very
far from having military tastes, but in these times no one can answer for
himself.”
After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy chair and with a
serious face asked Sónya, who was considered an excellent reader, to read the
appeal.
“To Moscow, our ancient Capital!
“The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He comes
to despoil our beloved country.”
Sónya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count listened with
closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.
Natásha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father and now at
Pierre.
Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess shook her
head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn expression in the manifesto. In
all these words she saw only that the danger threatening her son would not soon
be over. Shinshín, with a sarcastic smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to
make fun of anything that gave him the opportunity: Sónya’s reading, any
remark of the count’s, or even the manifesto itself should no better pretext
present itself.
After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes the Emperor
placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious nobility, Sónya, with a quiver
in her voice due chiefly to the attention that was being paid to her, read the last
words:
“We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that Capital and
in other parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction of all our levies,
both those now barring the enemy’s path and those freshly formed to defeat him
wherever he may appear. May the ruin he hopes to bring upon us recoil on his
own head, and may Europe delivered from bondage glorify the name of Russia!”
“Yes, that’s it!” cried the count, opening his moist eyes and sniffing
repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his nose; and he added,
“Let the Emperor but say the word and we’ll sacrifice everything and begrudge
nothing.”
Before Shinshín had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the
count’s patriotism, Natásha jumped up from her place and ran to her father.
“What a darling our Papa is!” she cried, kissing him, and she again looked at
Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned to her with her better
spirits.
“There! Here’s a patriot for you!” said Shinshín.
“Not a patriot at all, but simply...” Natásha replied in an injured tone.
“Everything seems funny to you, but this isn’t at all a joke....”
“A joke indeed!” put in the count. “Let him but say the word and we’ll all
go.... We’re not Germans!”
“But did you notice, it says, ‘for consultation’?” said Pierre.
“Never mind what it’s for....”
At this moment, Pétya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came up to
his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking voice that was now
deep and now shrill:
“Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it’s as you please, but I say
definitely that you must let me enter the army, because I can’t... that’s all....”
The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and turned
angrily to her husband.
“That comes of your talking!” said she.
But the count had already recovered from his excitement.
“Come, come!” said he. “Here’s a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You must
study.”
“It’s not nonsense, Papa. Fédya Obolénski is younger than I, and he’s going
too. Besides, all the same I can’t study now when...” Pétya stopped short, flushed
till he perspired, but still got out the words, “when our Fatherland is in danger.”
“That’ll do, that’ll do—nonsense....”
“But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything.”
“Pétya! Be quiet, I tell you!” cried the count, with a glance at his wife, who
had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.
“And I tell you—Peter Kirílych here will also tell you...”
“Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother’s milk has hardly dried on your lips and
you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you,” and the count moved to
go out of the room, taking the papers, probably to reread them in his study
before having a nap.
“Well, Peter Kirílych, let’s go and have a smoke,” he said.
Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natásha’s unwontedly brilliant eyes,
continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had reduced him to
this condition.
“No, I think I’ll go home.”
“Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don’t often
come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine,” said the count good-naturedly,
pointing to Natásha, “only brightens up when you’re here.”
“Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business...” said Pierre
hurriedly.
“Well, then, au revoir!” said the count, and went out of the room.
“Why are you going? Why are you upset?” asked Natásha, and she looked
challengingly into Pierre’s eyes.
“Because I love you!” was what he wanted to say, but he did not say it, and
only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.
“Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No, simply I have
business....”
“Why? No, tell me!” Natásha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.
They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He tried to
smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he silently kissed her
hand and went out.
Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostóvs’ any more.
CHAPTER XXI
After the definite refusal he had received, Pétya went to his room and there
locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea, silent, morose, and
with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to notice anything.
Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the Rostóvs’
domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him. That morning
Pétya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and collar to look like a
grown-up man. He frowned before his looking glass, gesticulated, shrugged his
shoulders, and finally, without saying a word to anyone, took his cap and left the
house by the back door, trying to avoid notice. Pétya decided to go straight to
where the Emperor was and to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting (he
imagined the Emperor to be always surrounded by gentlemen-in-waiting) that
he, Count Rostóv, in spite of his youth wished to serve his country; that youth
could be no hindrance to loyalty, and that he was ready to... While dressing,
Pétya had prepared many fine things he meant to say to the gentleman-in-
waiting.
It was on the very fact of being so young that Pétya counted for success in
reaching the Emperor—he even thought how surprised everyone would be at his
youthfulness—and yet in the arrangement of his collar and hair and by his sedate
deliberate walk he wished to appear a grown-up man. But the farther he went
and the more his attention was diverted by the ever-increasing crowds moving
toward the Krémlin, the less he remembered to walk with the sedateness and
deliberation of a man. As he approached the Krémlin he even began to avoid
being crushed and resolutely stuck out his elbows in a menacing way. But within
the Trinity Gateway he was so pressed to the wall by people who probably were
unaware of the patriotic intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his
determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in, rumbling
beneath the archway. Beside Pétya stood a peasant woman, a footman, two
tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing some time in the gateway,
Pétya tried to move forward in front of the others without waiting for all the
carriages to pass, and he began resolutely working his way with his elbows, but
the woman just in front of him, who was the first against whom he directed his
efforts, angrily shouted at him:
“What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don’t you see we’re all standing
still? Then why push?”
“Anybody can shove,” said the footman, and also began working his elbows
to such effect that he pushed Pétya into a very filthy corner of the gateway.
Pétya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the damp collar
which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a man’s.
He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if he were now to
approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he would not be admitted to the
Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten oneself up or move to another place,
because of the crowd. One of the generals who drove past was an acquaintance
of the Rostóvs’, and Pétya thought of asking his help, but came to the conclusion
that that would not be a manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed in,
the crowd, carrying Pétya with it, streamed forward into the Krémlin Square
which was already full of people. There were people not only in the square, but
everywhere—on the slopes and on the roofs. As soon as Pétya found himself in
the square he clearly heard the sound of bells and the joyous voices of the crowd
that filled the whole Krémlin.
For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were bared, and
everyone rushed forward in one direction. Pétya was being pressed so that he
could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted, “Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” Pétya
stood on tiptoe and pushed and pinched, but could see nothing except the people
about him.
All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm. A
tradesman’s wife standing beside Pétya sobbed, and the tears ran down her
cheeks.
“Father! Angel! Dear one!” she kept repeating, wiping away her tears with her
fingers.
“Hurrah!” was heard on all sides.
For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush forward.
Quite beside himself, Pétya, clinching his teeth and rolling his eyes
ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting “hurrah!” as if he
were prepared that instant to kill himself and everyone else, but on both sides of
him other people with similarly ferocious faces pushed forward and everybody
shouted “hurrah!”
“So this is what the Emperor is!” thought Pétya. “No, I can’t petition him
myself—that would be too bold.” But in spite of this he continued to struggle
desperately forward, and from between the backs of those in front he caught
glimpses of an open space with a strip of red cloth spread out on it; but just then
the crowd swayed back—the police in front were pushing back those who had
pressed too close to the procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace to
the Cathedral of the Assumption—and Pétya unexpectedly received such a blow
on his side and ribs and was squeezed so hard that suddenly everything grew dim
before his eyes and he lost consciousness. When he came to himself, a man of
clerical appearance with a tuft of gray hair at the back of his head and wearing a
shabby blue cassock—probably a church clerk and chanter—was holding him
under the arm with one hand while warding off the pressure of the crowd with
the other.
“You’ve crushed the young gentleman!” said the clerk. “What are you up to?
Gently!... They’ve crushed him, crushed him!”
The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd spread out
again more evenly, and the clerk led Pétya—pale and breathless—to the Tsar-
cannon. Several people were sorry for Pétya, and suddenly a crowd turned
toward him and pressed round him. Those who stood nearest him attended to
him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him on the raised platform of the cannon, and
reproached those others (whoever they might be) who had crushed him.
“One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it? Killing
people! Poor dear, he’s as white as a sheet!”—various voices were heard saying.
Pétya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain had
passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had obtained a place
by the cannon from where he hoped to see the Emperor who would be returning
that way. Pétya no longer thought of presenting his petition. If he could only see
the Emperor he would be happy!
While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption—it was
a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor’s arrival and of
thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the Turks—the crowd outside
spread out and hawkers appeared, selling kvas, gingerbread, and poppyseed
sweets (of which Pétya was particularly fond), and ordinary conversation could
again be heard. A tradesman’s wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling
how much the shawl had cost; another was saying that all silk goods had now
got dear. The clerk who had rescued Pétya was talking to a functionary about the
priests who were officiating that day with the bishop. The clerk several times
used the word “plenary” (of the service), a word Pétya did not understand. Two
young citizens were joking with some serf girls who were cracking nuts. All
these conversations, especially the joking with the girls, were such as might have
had a particular charm for Pétya at his age, but they did not interest him now. He
sat on his elevation—the pedestal of the cannon—still agitated as before by the
thought of the Emperor and by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he
had experienced when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still
further intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.
Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the embankment, to
celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and the crowd rushed impetuously
toward the embankment to watch the firing. Pétya too would have run there, but
the clerk who had taken the young gentleman under his protection stopped him.
The firing was still proceeding when officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-
waiting came running out of the cathedral, and after them others in a more
leisurely manner: caps were again raised, and those who had run to look at the
cannon ran back again. At last four men in uniforms and sashes emerged from
the cathedral doors. “Hurrah! hurrah!” shouted the crowd again.
“Which is he? Which?” asked Pétya in a tearful voice, of those around him,
but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and Pétya, fixing on one
of those four men, whom he could not clearly see for the tears of joy that filled
his eyes, concentrated all his enthusiasm on him—though it happened not to be
the Emperor—frantically shouted “Hurrah!” and resolved that tomorrow, come
what might, he would join the army.
The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and began to
disperse. It was already late, and Pétya had not eaten anything and was drenched
with perspiration, yet he did not go home but stood with that diminishing, but
still considerable, crowd before the palace while the Emperor dined—looking in
at the palace windows, expecting he knew not what, and envying alike the
notables he saw arriving at the entrance to dine with the Emperor and the court
footmen who served at table, glimpses of whom could be seen through the
windows.
While the Emperor was dining, Valúev, looking out of the window, said:
“The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again.”
The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit, rose and
went out onto the balcony. The people, with Pétya among them, rushed toward
the balcony.
“Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!...” cried the crowd, and Pétya with it, and
again the women and men of weaker mold, Pétya among them, wept with joy.
A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand broke off,
fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A coachman in a jerkin, who
stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched it up. Several people in the crowd
rushed at the coachman. Seeing this the Emperor had a plateful of biscuits
brought him and began throwing them down from the balcony. Pétya’s eyes
grew bloodshot, and still more excited by the danger of being crushed, he rushed
at the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to have a biscuit from the Tsar’s
hand and he felt that he must not give way. He sprang forward and upset an old
woman who was catching at a biscuit; the old woman did not consider herself
defeated though she was lying on the ground—she grabbed at some biscuits but
her hand did not reach them. Pétya pushed her hand away with his knee, seized a
biscuit, and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted “Hurrah!” with a voice
already hoarse.
The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd began to
disperse.
“There! I said if only we waited—and so it was!” was being joyfully said by
various people.
Happy as Pétya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that all the
enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home from the Krémlin,
but called on his friend Obolénski, who was fifteen and was also entering the
regiment. On returning home Pétya announced resolutely and firmly that if he
was not allowed to enter the service he would run away. And next day, Count
Ilyá Rostóv—though he had not yet quite yielded—went to inquire how he could
arrange for Pétya to serve where there would be least danger.
CHAPTER XXII
Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of carriages were
standing outside the Slobóda Palace.
The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry in their
uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted coats of blue cloth and
wearing medals. In the noblemen’s hall there was an incessant movement and
buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat on high-backed chairs at a large table
under the portrait of the Emperor, but most of the gentry were strolling about the
room.
All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the Club or in their own
houses, were in uniform—some in that of Catherine’s day, others in that of
Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of Alexander’s time or the
ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the general characteristic of being in
uniform imparted something strange and fantastic to these diverse and familiar
personalities, both old and young. The old men, dim-eyed, toothless, bald,
sallow, and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled, were especially striking. For the
most part they sat quietly in their places and were silent, or, if they walked about
and talked, attached themselves to someone younger. On all these faces, as on
the faces of the crowd Pétya had seen in the Square, there was a striking
contradiction: the general expectation of a solemn event, and at the same time
the everyday interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook, Zinaída
Dmítrievna’s health, and so on.
Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a nobleman’s uniform
that had become too tight for him. He was agitated; this extraordinary gathering
not only of nobles but also of the merchant-class—les états généraux (States-
General)—evoked in him a whole series of ideas he had long laid aside but
which were deeply graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat Social and the
French Revolution. The words that had struck him in the Emperor’s appeal—that
the sovereign was coming to the capital for consultation with his people—
strengthened this idea. And imagining that in this direction something important
which he had long awaited was drawing near, he strolled about watching and
listening to conversations, but nowhere finding any confirmation of the ideas
that occupied him.
The Emperor’s manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all moved
about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of conversation, Pierre heard
questions of where the marshals of the nobility were to stand when the Emperor
entered, when a ball should be given in the Emperor’s honor, whether they
should group themselves by districts or by whole provinces... and so on; but as
soon as the war was touched on, or what the nobility had been convened for, the
talk became undecided and indefinite. Then all preferred listening to speaking.
A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a retired naval
officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small crowd was pressing round
him. Pierre went up to the circle that had formed round the speaker and listened.
Count Ilyá Rostóv, in a military uniform of Catherine’s time, was sauntering
with a pleasant smile among the crowd, with all of whom he was acquainted. He
too approached that group and listened with a kindly smile and nods of approval,
as he always did, to what the speaker was saying. The retired naval man was
speaking very boldly, as was evident from the expression on the faces of the
listeners and from the fact that some people Pierre knew as the meekest and
quietest of men walked away disapprovingly or expressed disagreement with
him. Pierre pushed his way into the middle of the group, listened, and convinced
himself that the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite different from his
own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly sonorous, musical, and aristocratic
baritone voice, pleasantly swallowing his r’s and generally slurring his
consonants: the voice of a man calling out to his servant, “Heah! Bwing me my
pipe!” It was indicative of dissipation and the exercise of authority.
“What if the Smolénsk people have offahd to waise militia for the Empewah?
Ah we to take Smolénsk as our patte’n? If the noble awistocwacy of the
pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its loyalty to our sov’weign the
Empewah in other ways. Have we fo’gotten the waising of the militia in the yeah
‘seven? All that did was to enwich the pwiests’ sons and thieves and
wobbahs....”
Count Ilyá Rostóv smiled blandly and nodded approval.
“And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only wuined our
farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o’ ou’ men will wetu’n neithah
soldiers no’ peasants, and we’ll get only depwavity fwom them. The nobility
don’t gwudge theah lives—evewy one of us will go and bwing in more
wecwuits, and the sov’weign” (that was the way he referred to the Emperor)
“need only say the word and we’ll all die fo’ him!” added the orator with
animation.
Count Rostóv’s mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but Pierre
wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred, but not yet sure
what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had he opened his mouth when
one of the senators, a man without a tooth in his head, with a shrewd though
angry expression, standing near the first speaker, interrupted him. Evidently
accustomed to managing debates and to maintaining an argument, he began in
low but distinct tones:
“I imagine, sir,” said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth, “that we have
been summoned here not to discuss whether it’s best for the empire at the present
moment to adopt conscription or to call out the militia. We have been summoned
to reply to the appeal with which our sovereign the Emperor has honored us. But
to judge what is best—conscription or the militia—we can leave to the supreme
authority....”
Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his heart
against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow attitude into the
deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and interrupted him. He
himself did not yet know what he would say, but he began to speak eagerly,
occasionally lapsing into French or expressing himself in bookish Russian.
“Excuse me, your excellency,” he began. (He was well acquainted with the
senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address him formally.)
“Though I don’t agree with the gentleman...” (he hesitated: he wished to say,
“Mon très honorable préopinant”—“My very honorable opponent”) “with the
gentleman... whom I have not the honor of knowing, I suppose that the nobility
have been summoned not merely to express their sympathy and enthusiasm but
also to consider the means by which we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine,” he
went on, warming to his subject, “that the Emperor himself would not be
satisfied to find in us merely owners of serfs whom we are willing to devote to
his service, and chair à canon * we are ready to make of ourselves—and not to
obtain from us any co-co-counsel.”
* “Food for cannon.”
Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator’s sarcastic smile
and the freedom of Pierre’s remarks. Only Count Rostóv was pleased with them
as he had been pleased with those of the naval officer, the senator, and in general
with whatever speech he had last heard.
“I think that before discussing these questions,” Pierre continued, “we should
ask the Emperor—most respectfully ask His Majesty—to let us know the
number of our troops and the position in which our army and our forces now are,
and then...”
But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked from three
sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old acquaintance, a boston player
who had always been well disposed toward him, Stepán Stepánovich Adráksin.
Adráksin was in uniform, and whether as a result of the uniform or from some
other cause Pierre saw before him quite a different man. With a sudden
expression of malevolence on his aged face, Adráksin shouted at Pierre:
“In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the Emperor about
that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that right, the Emperor could not
answer such a question. The troops are moved according to the enemy’s
movements and the number of men increases and decreases....”
Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty years of
age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies’ and knew as a bad cardplayer,
and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to Pierre, interrupted
Adráksin.
“Yes, and this is not a time for discussing,” he continued, “but for acting: there
is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy Russia, to desecrate the
tombs of our fathers, to carry off our wives and children.” The nobleman smote
his breast. “We will all arise, everyone of us will go, for our father the Tsar!” he
shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were heard in the
crowd. “We are Russians and will not grudge our blood in defense of our faith,
the throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease raving if we are sons of our
Fatherland! We will show Europe how Russia rises to the defense of Russia!”
Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that his words,
apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible than the sound of his
opponent’s voice.
Count Rostóv at the back of the crowd was expressing approval; several
persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end of a phrase, said:
“That’s right, quite right! Just so!”
Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his serfs, or
himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in order to be able to
improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many voices shouted and talked at the
same time, so that Count Rostóv had not time to signify his approval of them all,
and the group increased, dispersed, re-formed, and then moved with a hum of
talk into the largest hall and to the big table. Not only was Pierre’s attempt to
speak unsuccessful, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and people
turned away from him as from a common enemy. This happened not because
they were displeased by the substance of his speech, which had even been
forgotten after the many subsequent speeches, but to animate it the crowd needed
a tangible object to love and a tangible object to hate. Pierre became the latter.
Many other orators spoke after the excited nobleman, and all in the same tone.
Many spoke eloquently and with originality.
Glínka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized (cries of
“author! author!” were heard in the crowd), said that “hell must be repulsed by
hell,” and that he had seen a child smiling at lightning flashes and thunderclaps,
but “we will not be that child.”
“Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!” was repeated approvingly in the back rows of the
crowd.
The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or bald
seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of whom Pierre
had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or playing boston at the clubs.
With an incessant hum of voices the crowd advanced to the table. Pressed by the
throng against the high backs of the chairs, the orators spoke one after another
and sometimes two together. Those standing behind noticed what a speaker
omitted to say and hastened to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked
their brains to find some thought and hastened to utter it. The old magnates,
whom Pierre knew, sat and turned to look first at one and then at another, and
their faces for the most part only expressed the fact that they found it very hot.
Pierre, however, felt excited, and the general desire to show that they were ready
to go to all lengths—which found expression in the tones and looks more than in
the substance of the speeches—infected him too. He did not renounce his
opinions, but felt himself in some way to blame and wished to justify himself.
“I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices when we
know what is needed!” said he, trying to be heard above the other voices.
One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his attention was
immediately diverted by an exclamation at the other side of the table.
“Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!” shouted one
man.
“He is the enemy of mankind!” cried another. “Allow me to speak....”
“Gentlemen, you are crushing me!...”
CHAPTER XXIII
At that moment Count Rostopchín with his protruding chin and alert eyes,
wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder, entered the room,
stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of gentry.
“Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment,” said Rostopchín. “I
am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are in, I think there is little
need for discussion. The Emperor has deigned to summon us and the merchants.
Millions will pour forth from there”—he pointed to the merchants’ hall—“but
our business is to supply men and not spare ourselves.... That is the least we can
do!”
A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the table. The
whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all the preceding noise the
sound of their old voices saying one after another, “I agree,” or for variety, “I too
am of that opinion,” and so on had even a mournful effect.
The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow nobility
and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully equipped, out of every
thousand serfs, as the Smolénsk gentry had done. Their chairs made a scraping
noise as the gentlemen who had conferred rose with apparent relief, and began
walking up and down, arm in arm, to stretch their legs and converse in couples.
“The Emperor! The Emperor!” a sudden cry resounded through the halls and
the whole throng hurried to the entrance.
The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two lines of
nobles. Every face expressed respectful, awe-struck curiosity. Pierre stood rather
far off and could not hear all that the Emperor said. From what he did hear he
understood that the Emperor spoke of the danger threatening the empire and of
the hopes he placed on the Moscow nobility. He was answered by a voice which
informed him of the resolution just arrived at.
“Gentlemen!” said the Emperor with a quivering voice.
There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so that Pierre
distinctly heard the pleasantly human voice of the Emperor saying with emotion:
“I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but today it has
surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the name of the Fatherland!
Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most precious....”
The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing round him, and
rapturous exclamations were heard from all sides.
“Yes, most precious... a royal word,” said Count Rostóv, with a sob. He stood
at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything, understood everything in
his own way.
From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the merchants. There
he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those who saw him come out
from the merchants’ hall with tears of emotion in his eyes. As became known
later, he had scarcely begun to address the merchants before tears gushed from
his eyes and he concluded in a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he
was coming out accompanied by two merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat
otkupshchík. The other was the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face and narrow
beard. Both were weeping. Tears filled the thin man’s eyes, and the fat
otkupshchík sobbed outright like a child and kept repeating:
“Our lives and property—take them, Your Majesty!”
Pierre’s one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he was ready to
go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice everything. He now felt ashamed of
his speech with its constitutional tendency and sought an opportunity of effacing
it. Having heard that Count Mamónov was furnishing a regiment, Bezúkhov at
once informed Rostopchín that he would give a thousand men and their
maintenance.
Old Rostóv could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears, and at
once consented to Pétya’s request and went himself to enter his name.
Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles all took off their
uniforms and settled down again in their homes and clubs, and not without some
groans gave orders to their stewards about the enrollment, feeling amazed
themselves at what they had done.
BOOK TEN: 1812
CHAPTER I
Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going to
Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he received,
could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to the stimulating
influence of a June morning, and could not refrain from bursts of anger in the
presence of Kurákin and then of Balashëv.
Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be personally
insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the best way, because he
wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a great commander. Rostóv charged
the French because he could not restrain his wish for a gallop across a level
field; and in the same way the innumerable people who took part in the war
acted in accord with their personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and
aims. They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned,
imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it of their own free will,
but they all were involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work concealed from
them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and
the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.
The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal interests have
vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of that time but its historic
results.
Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal aims, to
further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of them at all expected
—neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still less any of those who did the actual
fighting.
The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear to us now. No
one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand, its advance into the heart of
Russia late in the season without any preparation for a winter campaign and, on
the other, the character given to the war by the burning of Russian towns and the
hatred of the foe this aroused among the Russian people. But no one at the time
foresaw (what now seems so evident) that this was the only way an army of
eight hundred thousand men—the best in the world and led by the best general—
could be destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half its numerical strength, and
led by inexperienced commanders as the Russian army was. Not only did no one
see this, but on the Russian side every effort was made to hinder the only thing
that could save Russia, while on the French side, despite Napoleon’s experience
and so-called military genius, every effort was directed to pushing on to Moscow
at the end of the summer, that is, to doing the very thing that was bound to lead
to destruction.
In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of saying
that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he sought a battle and
that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolénsk, and of making similar
statements to show that the danger of the campaign was even then understood.
Russian authors are still fonder of telling us that from the commencement of the
campaign a Scythian war plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of
Russia, and this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain
Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself—pointing to
notes, projects, and letters which contain hints of such a line of action. But all
these hints at what happened, both from the French side and the Russian, are
advanced only because they fit in with the event. Had that event not occurred
these hints would have been forgotten, as we have forgotten the thousands and
millions of hints and expectations to the contrary which were current then but
have now been forgotten because the event falsified them. There are always so
many conjectures as to the issue of any event that however it may end there will
always be people to say: “I said then that it would be so,” quite forgetting that
amid their innumerable conjectures many were to quite the contrary effect.
Conjectures as to Napoleon’s awareness of the danger of extending his line,
and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the depths of Russia, are
evidently of that kind, and only by much straining can historians attribute such
conceptions to Napoleon and his marshals, or such plans to the Russian
commanders. All the facts are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During
the whole period of the war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to
draw the French into the heart of the country, but from their first entry into
Russia everything was done to stop them. And not only was Napoleon not afraid
to extend his line, but he welcomed every step forward as a triumph and did not
seek battle as eagerly as in former campaigns, but very lazily.
At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our sole aim
was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage if we meant to
retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the country. Our Emperor joined the
army to encourage it to defend every inch of Russian soil and not to retreat. The
enormous Drissa camp was formed on Pfuel’s plan, and there was no intention of
retiring farther. The Emperor reproached the commanders in chief for every step
they retired. He could not bear the idea of letting the enemy even reach
Smolénsk, still less could he contemplate the burning of Moscow, and when our
armies did unite he was displeased that Smolénsk was abandoned and burned
without a general engagement having been fought under its walls.
So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were still
more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating into the depths of
the country.
Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country and
missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he was at Smolénsk
and thought only of how to advance farther, though as we now see that advance
was evidently ruinous to him.
The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of the
advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders then think
of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring of Napoleon into the
depths of the country was not the result of any plan, for no one believed it to be
possible; it resulted from a most complex interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes
among those who took part in the war and had no perception whatever of the
inevitable, or of the one way of saving Russia. Everything came about
fortuitously. The armies were divided at the commencement of the campaign.
We tried to unite them, with the evident intention of giving battle and checking
the enemy’s advance, and by this effort to unite them while avoiding battle with
a much stronger enemy, and necessarily withdrawing the armies at an acute
angle—we led the French on to Smolénsk. But we withdrew at an acute angle
not only because the French advanced between our two armies; the angle
became still more acute and we withdrew still farther, because Barclay de Tolly
was an unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagratión (who would come under his
command), and Bagratión—being in command of the second army—tried to
postpone joining up and coming under Barclay’s command as long as he could.
Bagratión was slow in effecting the junction—though that was the chief aim of
all at headquarters—because, as he alleged, he exposed his army to danger on
this march, and it was best for him to retire more to the left and more to the
south, worrying the enemy from flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine
recruits for his army; and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under
the command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior to his
own.
The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence and
ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of advisers and plans,
destroyed the first army’s energy and it retired.
The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but Paulucci, aiming at
becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed his energy to influence
Alexander, and Pfuel’s whole plan was abandoned and the command entrusted to
Barclay. But as Barclay did not inspire confidence his power was limited. The
armies were divided, there was no unity of command, and Barclay was
unpopular; but from this confusion, division, and the unpopularity of the foreign
commander in chief, there resulted on the one hand indecision and the avoidance
of a battle (which we could not have refrained from had the armies been united
and had someone else, instead of Barclay, been in command) and on the other an
ever-increasing indignation against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic
zeal.
At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and indeed the
only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was necessary for him to
inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the nation in general to a patriotic
war. And by this visit of the Emperor to Moscow the strength of the Russian
army was trebled.
He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief’s undivided control of
the army, and hoping that more decisive action would then be taken, but the
command of the armies became still more confused and enfeebled. Bennigsen,
the Tsarévich, and a swarm of adjutants general remained with the army to keep
the commander in chief under observation and arouse his energy, and Barclay,
feeling less free than ever under the observation of all these “eyes of the
Emperor,” became still more cautious of undertaking any decisive action and
avoided giving battle.
Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarévich hinted at treachery and demanded a
general engagement. Lubomírski, Bronnítski, Wlocki, and the others of that
group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under pretext of sending papers to
the Emperor, dispatched these Polish adjutants general to Petersburg and
plunged into an open struggle with Bennigsen and the Tsarévich.
At Smolénsk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagratión disliked it.
Bagratión drove up in a carriage to the house occupied by Barclay. Barclay
donned his sash and came out to meet and report to his senior officer Bagratión.
Despite his seniority in rank Bagratión, in this contest of magnanimity, took
his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted, agreed with him less than ever.
By the Emperor’s orders Bagratión reported direct to him. He wrote to
Arakchéev, the Emperor’s confidant: “It must be as my sovereign pleases, but I
cannot work with the Minister (meaning Barclay). For God’s sake send me
somewhere else if only in command of a regiment. I cannot stand it here.
Headquarters are so full of Germans that a Russian cannot exist and there is no
sense in anything. I thought I was really serving my sovereign and the
Fatherland, but it turns out that I am serving Barclay. I confess I do not want to.”
The swarm of Bronnítskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still further
embittered the relations between the commanders in chief, and even less unity
resulted. Preparations were made to fight the French before Smolénsk. A general
was sent to survey the position. This general, hating Barclay, rode to visit a
friend of his own, a corps commander, and, having spent the day with him,
returned to Barclay and condemned, as unsuitable from every point of view, the
battleground he had not seen.
While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of battle,
and while we were looking for the French—having lost touch with them—the
French stumbled upon Nevérovski’s division and reached the walls of Smolénsk.
It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolénsk to save our lines of
communication. The battle was fought and thousands were killed on both sides.
Smolénsk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and of the
whole people. But Smolénsk was burned by its own inhabitants who had been
misled by their governor. And these ruined inhabitants, setting an example to
other Russians, went to Moscow thinking only of their own losses but kindling
hatred of the foe. Napoleon advanced farther and we retired, thus arriving at the
very result which caused his destruction.
CHAPTER II
The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess Mary to come
to his study.
“Well? Are you satisfied now?” said he. “You’ve made me quarrel with my
son! Satisfied, are you? That’s all you wanted! Satisfied?... It hurts me, it hurts.
I’m old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well then, gloat over it! Gloat
over it!”
After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He was ill
and did not leave his study.
Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the old prince not
only excluded her from his room, but did not admit Mademoiselle Bourienne
either. Tíkhon alone attended him.
At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his former way of
life, devoting himself with special activity to building operations and the
arrangement of the gardens and completely breaking off his relations with
Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks and cold tone to his daughter seemed to say:
“There, you see? You plotted against me, you lied to Prince Andrew about my
relations with that Frenchwoman and made me quarrel with him, but you see I
need neither her nor you!”
Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching his
lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to Dessalles; the
rest of the day she spent over her books, with her old nurse, or with “God’s folk”
who sometimes came by the back door to see her.
Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She feared
for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at the strange cruelty
that impels men to kill one another, but she did not understand the significance
of this war, which seemed to her like all previous wars. She did not realize the
significance of this war, though Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed
was passionately interested in its progress and tried to explain his own
conception of it to her, and though the “God’s folk” who came to see her
reported, in their own way, the rumors current among the people of an invasion
by Antichrist, and though Julie (now Princess Drubetskáya), who had resumed
correspondence with her, wrote patriotic letters from Moscow.
“I write you in Russian, my good friend,” wrote Julie in her Frenchified
Russian, “because I have a detestation for all the French, and the same for their
language which I cannot support to hear spoken.... We in Moscow are elated by
enthusiasm for our adored Emperor.
“My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but the
news which I have inspires me yet more.
“You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raévski, embracing his two sons
and saying: ‘I will perish with them but we will not be shaken!’ And truly though
the enemy was twice stronger than we, we were unshakable. We pass the time as
we can, but in war as in war! The princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days
with me, and we, unhappy widows of live men, make beautiful conversations
over our charpie, only you, my friend, are missing...” and so on.
The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance of this war
was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not recognize it, and laughed at
Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner. The prince’s tone was so calm and
confident that Princess Mary unhesitatingly believed him.
All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even animated. He
planned another garden and began a new building for the domestic serfs. The
only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about him was that he slept very
little and, instead of sleeping in his study as usual, changed his sleeping place
every day. One day he would order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery,
another day he remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing
room and dozed there without undressing, while—instead of Mademoiselle
Bourienne—a serf boy read to him. Then again he would spend a night in the
dining room.
On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his first
letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had dutifully
asked his father’s forgiveness for what he had allowed himself to say and begged
to be restored to his favor. To this letter the old prince had replied affectionately,
and from that time had kept the Frenchwoman at a distance. Prince Andrew’s
second letter, written near Vítebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave
a brief account of the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had drawn
and forecasts as to the further progress of the war. In this letter Prince Andrew
pointed out to his father the danger of staying at Bald Hills, so near the theater of
war and on the army’s direct line of march, and advised him to move to Moscow.
At dinner that day, on Dessalles’ mentioning that the French were said to have
already entered Vítebsk, the old prince remembered his son’s letter.
“There was a letter from Prince Andrew today,” he said to Princess Mary
—“Haven’t you read it?”
“No, Father,” she replied in a frightened voice.
She could not have read the letter as she did not even know it had arrived.
“He writes about this war,” said the prince, with the ironic smile that had
become habitual to him in speaking of the present war.
“That must be very interesting,” said Dessalles. “Prince Andrew is in a
position to know...”
“Oh, very interesting!” said Mademoiselle Bourienne.
“Go and get it for me,” said the old prince to Mademoiselle Bourienne. “You
know—under the paperweight on the little table.”
Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.
“No, don’t!” he exclaimed with a frown. “You go, Michael Ivánovich.”
Michael Ivánovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he had left the
room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down his napkin and went
himself.
“They can’t do anything... always make some muddle,” he muttered.
While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle Bourienne, and
even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The old prince returned with
quick steps, accompanied by Michael Ivánovich, bringing the letter and a plan.
These he put down beside him—not letting anyone read them at dinner.
On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess Mary and,
spreading out before him the plan of the new building and fixing his eyes upon
it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she had done so Princess Mary looked
inquiringly at her father. He was examining the plan, evidently engrossed in his
own ideas.
“What do you think of it, Prince?” Dessalles ventured to ask.
“I? I?...” said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not taking his eyes
from the plan of the building.
“Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that...”
“Ha ha ha! The theater of war!” said the prince. “I have said and still say that
the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never get beyond the Niemen.”
Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of the Niemen
when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess Mary, forgetting the
geographical position of the Niemen, thought that what her father was saying
was correct.
“When the snow melts they’ll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they could fail
to see it,” the prince continued, evidently thinking of the campaign of 1807
which seemed to him so recent. “Bennigsen should have advanced into Prussia
sooner, then things would have taken a different turn...”
“But, Prince,” Dessalles began timidly, “the letter mentions Vítebsk....”
“Ah, the letter? Yes...” replied the prince peevishly. “Yes... yes...” His face
suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused. “Yes, he writes that the
French were beaten at... at... what river is it?”
Dessalles dropped his eyes.
“The prince says nothing about that,” he remarked gently.
“Doesn’t he? But I didn’t invent it myself.”
No one spoke for a long time.
“Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivánovich,” he suddenly went on, raising his head
and pointing to the plan of the building, “tell me how you mean to alter it....”
Michael Ivánovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking to him
about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and Dessalles and went to his
own room.
Princess Mary saw Dessalles’ embarrassed and astonished look fixed on her
father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that her father had
forgotten his son’s letter on the drawing room table; but she was not only afraid
to speak of it and ask Dessalles the reason of his confusion and silence, but was
afraid even to think about it.
In the evening Michael Ivánovich, sent by the prince, came to Princess Mary
for Prince Andrew’s letter which had been forgotten in the drawing room. She
gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to her to do so, ventured to ask him what
her father was doing.
“Always busy,” replied Michael Ivánovich with a respectfully ironic smile
which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. “He’s worrying very much about the
new building. He has been reading a little, but now”—Michael Ivánovich went
on, lowering his voice—“now he’s at his desk, busy with his will, I expect.”
(One of the prince’s favorite occupations of late had been the preparation of
some papers he meant to leave at his death and which he called his “will.”)
“And Alpátych is being sent to Smolénsk?” asked Princess Mary.
“Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time.”
CHAPTER III
When Michael Ivánovich returned to the study with the letter, the old prince,
with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was sitting at his open bureau with
screened candles, holding a paper in his outstretched hand, and in a somewhat
dramatic attitude was reading his manuscript—his “Remarks” as he termed it—
which was to be transmitted to the Emperor after his death.
When Michael Ivánovich went in there were tears in the prince’s eyes evoked
by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had been written.
He took the letter from Michael Ivánovich’s hand, put it in his pocket, folded up
his papers, and called in Alpátych who had long been waiting.
The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolénsk and, walking up and
down the room past Alpátych who stood by the door, he gave his instructions.
“First, notepaper—do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample, gilt-edged... it
must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing wax, as in Michael Ivánovich’s
list.”
He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes.
“Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed.”
Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to be of a
special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather case had to be
ordered to keep the “will” in.
The instructions to Alpátych took over two hours and still the prince did not
let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed his eyes, and dozed off.
Alpátych made a slight movement.
“Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I’ll send after you.”
Alpátych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into it,
fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at the table to write to
the governor.
It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished to sleep,
but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing thoughts came to
him in bed. So he called Tíkhon and went through the rooms with him to show
him where to set up the bed for that night.
He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed unsatisfactory, but
worst of all was his customary couch in the study. That couch was dreadful to
him, probably because of the oppressive thoughts he had had when lying there. It
was unsatisfactory everywhere, but the corner behind the piano in the sitting
room was better than other places: he had never slept there yet.
With the help of a footman Tíkhon brought in the bedstead and began putting
it up.
“That’s not right! That’s not right!” cried the prince, and himself pushed it a
few inches from the corner and then closer in again.
“Well, at last I’ve finished, now I’ll rest,” thought the prince, and let Tíkhon
undress him.
Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself of his coat
and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on the bed, and appeared to
be meditating as he looked contemptuously at his withered yellow legs. He was
not meditating, but only deferring the moment of making the effort to lift those
legs up and turn over on the bed. “Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might
end and you would release me!” thought he. Pressing his lips together he made
that effort for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had he done
so before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards beneath him as if it
were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened to him almost every night. He
opened his eyes as they were closing.
“No peace, damn them!” he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. “Ah
yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was keeping till I
should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them. No, it was something,
something in the drawing room. Princess Mary talked some nonsense. Dessalles,
that fool, said something. Something in my pocket—can’t remember....”
“Tíkhon, what did we talk about at dinner?”
“About Prince Michael...”
“Be quiet, quiet!” The prince slapped his hand on the table. “Yes, I know,
Prince Andrew’s letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said something about
Vítebsk. Now I’ll read it.”
He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table—on which stood a glass
of lemonade and a spiral wax candle—moved close to the bed, and putting on
his spectacles he began reading. Only now in the stillness of the night, reading it
by the faint light under the green shade, did he grasp its meaning for a moment.
“The French at Vítebsk, in four days’ march they may be at Smolénsk;
perhaps are already there! Tíkhon!” Tíkhon jumped up. “No, no, I don’t want
anything!” he shouted.
He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And there rose
before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian camp, and himself
a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face, vigorous and alert, entering
Potëmkin’s gaily colored tent, and a burning sense of jealousy of “the favorite”
agitated him now as strongly as it had done then. He recalled all the words
spoken at that first meeting with Potëmkin. And he saw before him a plump,
rather sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile and
her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that same face on the
catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zúbov over her coffin about his right
to kiss her hand.
“Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with all the
present! Quicker, quicker—and that they should leave me in peace!”
CHAPTER IV
Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkónski’s estate, lay forty miles east from
Smolénsk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.
The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to Alpátych, Dessalles,
having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that, as the prince was not very well
and was taking no steps to secure his safety, though from Prince Andrew’s letter
it was evident that to remain at Bald Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully
advised her to send a letter by Alpátych to the Provincial Governor at Smolénsk,
asking him to let her know the state of affairs and the extent of the danger to
which Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles wrote this letter to the Governor for
Princess Mary, she signed it, and it was given to Alpátych with instructions to
hand it to the Governor and to come back as quickly as possible if there was
danger.
Having received all his orders Alpátych, wearing a white beaver hat—a
present from the prince—and carrying a stick as the prince did, went out
accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready harnessed to a
small conveyance with a leather hood.
The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness stuffed with
paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive with ringing bells; but on
a long journey Alpátych liked to have them. His satellites—the senior clerk, a
countinghouse clerk, a scullery maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy,
the coachman, and various domestic serfs—were seeing him off.
His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on and
behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle, and one of the
coachmen helped him into the vehicle.
“There! There! Women’s fuss! Women, women!” said Alpátych, puffing and
speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the trap.
After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpátych, not trying
to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald head and crossed himself
three times.
“If there is anything... come back, Yákov Alpátych! For Christ’s sake think of
us!” cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war and the enemy.
“Women, women! Women’s fuss!” muttered Alpátych to himself and started
on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye and the still-green,
thickly growing oats, and at other quite black fields just being plowed a second
time.
As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year’s splendid crop of corn,
scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there were already being reaped,
made his calculations as to the sowing and the harvest, and asked himself
whether he had not forgotten any of the prince’s orders.
Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town toward
evening on the fourth of August.
Alpátych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on the road.
As he approached Smolénsk he heard the sounds of distant firing, but these did
not impress him. What struck him most was the sight of a splendid field of oats
in which a camp had been pitched and which was being mown down by the
soldiers, evidently for fodder. This fact impressed Alpátych, but in thinking
about his own business he soon forgot it.
All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been bounded by the
will of the prince, and he never went beyond that limit. Everything not
connected with the execution of the prince’s orders did not interest and did not
even exist for Alpátych.
On reaching Smolénsk on the evening of the fourth of August he put up in the
Gáchina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by Ferapóntov, where he had
been in the habit of putting up for the last thirty years. Some thirty years ago
Ferapóntov, by Alpátych’s advice, had bought a wood from the prince, had
begun to trade, and now had a house, an inn, and a corn dealer’s shop in that
province. He was a stout, dark, red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a
broad knob of a nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and a round
belly.
Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapóntov was standing before his
shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpátych he went up to him.
“You’re welcome, Yákov Alpátych. Folks are leaving the town, but you have
come to it,” said he.
“Why are they leaving the town?” asked Alpátych.
“That’s what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French.”
“Women’s fuss, women’s fuss!” said Alpátych.
“Just what I think, Yákov Alpátych. What I say is: orders have been given not
to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants are asking three rubles for
carting—it isn’t Christian!”
Yákov Alpátych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for hay
for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed.
All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning Alpátych
donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on business. It was a sunny
morning and by eight o’clock it was already hot. “A good day for harvesting,”
thought Alpátych.
From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At eight
o’clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of musketry. Many
people were hurrying through the streets and there were many soldiers, but cabs
were still driving about, tradesmen stood at their shops, and service was being
held in the churches as usual. Alpátych went to the shops, to government offices,
to the post office, and to the Governor’s. In the offices and shops and at the post
office everyone was talking about the army and about the enemy who was
already attacking the town, everybody was asking what should be done, and all
were trying to calm one another.
In front of the Governor’s house Alpátych found a large number of people,
Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor’s. At the porch he met two of
the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This man, an ex-captain of police, was
saying angrily:
“It’s no joke, you know! It’s all very well if you’re single. ‘One man though
undone is but one,’ as the proverb says, but with thirteen in your family and all
the property... They’ve brought us to utter ruin! What sort of governors are they
to do that? They ought to be hanged—the brigands!...”
“Oh come, that’s enough!” said the other.
“What do I care? Let him hear! We’re not dogs,” said the ex-captain of police,
and looking round he noticed Alpátych.
“Oh, Yákov Alpátych! What have you come for?”
“To see the Governor by his excellency’s order,” answered Alpátych, lifting
his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the bosom of his coat as he always
did when he mentioned the prince.... “He has ordered me to inquire into the
position of affairs,” he added.
“Yes, go and find out!” shouted the angry gentleman. “They’ve brought things
to such a pass that there are no carts or anything!... There it is again, do you
hear?” said he, pointing in the direction whence came the sounds of firing.
“They’ve brought us all to ruin... the brigands!” he repeated, and descended
the porch steps.
Alpátych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were
tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another. The door of the
Governor’s room opened and they all rose and moved forward. An official ran
out, said some words to a merchant, called a stout official with a cross hanging
on his neck to follow him, and vanished again, evidently wishing to avoid the
inquiring looks and questions addressed to him. Alpátych moved forward and
next time the official came out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of
his buttoned coat, and handed him two letters.
“To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkónski,” he
announced with such solemnity and significance that the official turned to him
and took the letters.
A few minutes later the Governor received Alpátych and hurriedly said to
him:
“Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on the highest
instructions—here...” and he handed a paper to Alpátych. “Still, as the prince is
unwell my advice is that they should go to Moscow. I am just starting myself.
Inform them...”
But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into the room
and began to say something in French. The Governor’s face expressed terror.
“Go,” he said, nodding his head to Alpátych, and began questioning the
officer.
Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpátych when he came
out of the Governor’s room. Involuntarily listening now to the firing, which had
drawn nearer and was increasing in strength, Alpátych hurried to his inn. The
paper handed to him by the Governor said this:
“I assure you that the town of Smolénsk is not in the slightest danger as yet
and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with any. I from the one side and
Prince Bagratión from the other are marching to unite our forces before
Smolénsk, which junction will be effected on the 22nd instant, and both armies
with their united forces will defend our compatriots of the province entrusted to
your care till our efforts shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland, or
till the last warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From this you will see that
you have a perfect right to reassure the inhabitants of Smolénsk, for those
defended by two such brave armies may feel assured of victory.” (Instructions
from Barclay de Tolly to Baron Asch, the civil governor of Smolénsk, 1812.)
People were anxiously roaming about the streets.
Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept emerging
from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets. Loaded carts stood at
the house next to Ferapóntov’s and women were wailing and lamenting as they
said good-by. A small watchdog ran round barking in front of the harnessed
horses.
Alpátych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went straight to
the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman was asleep. He woke
him up, told him to harness, and went into the passage. From the host’s room
came the sounds of a child crying, the despairing sobs of a woman, and the
hoarse angry shouting of Ferapóntov. The cook began running hither and thither
in the passage like a frightened hen, just as Alpátych entered.
“He’s done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged her about
so!...”
“What for?” asked Alpátych.
“She kept begging to go away. She’s a woman! ‘Take me away,’ says she,
‘don’t let me perish with my little children! Folks,’ she says, ‘are all gone, so
why,’ she says, ‘don’t we go?’ And he began beating and pulling her about so!”
At these words Alpátych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to hear
more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper’s, where he had left
his purchases.
“You brute, you murderer!” screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a baby in
her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through the door at that
moment and down the steps into the yard.
Ferapóntov came out after her, but on seeing Alpátych adjusted his waistcoat,
smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpátych into the opposite room.
“Going already?” said he.
Alpátych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his packages and
asked how much he owed.
“We’ll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor’s?” asked Ferapóntov.
“What has been decided?”
Alpátych replied that the Governor had not told him anything definite.
“With our business, how can we get away?” said Ferapóntov. “We’d have to
pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobúzh and I tell them they’re not Christians
to ask it! Selivánov, now, did a good stroke last Thursday—sold flour to the
army at nine rubles a sack. Will you have some tea?” he added.
While the horses were being harnessed Alpátych and Ferapóntov over their
tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather for harvesting.
“Well, it seems to be getting quieter,” remarked Ferapóntov, finishing his third
cup of tea and getting up. “Ours must have got the best of it. The orders were not
to let them in. So we’re in force, it seems.... They say the other day Matthew
Iványch Plátov drove them into the river Márina and drowned some eighteen
thousand in one day.”
Alpátych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who had come
in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels, hoofs, and bells was
heard from the gateway as a little trap passed out.
It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in shadow, the other
half brightly lit by the sun. Alpátych looked out of the window and went to the
door. Suddenly the strange sound of a far-off whistling and thud was heard,
followed by a boom of cannon blending into a dull roar that set the windows
rattling.
He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the bridge.
From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of cannon balls and
bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds were hardly heard in
comparison with the noise of the firing outside the town and attracted little
attention from the inhabitants. The town was being bombarded by a hundred and
thirty guns which Napoleon had ordered up after four o’clock. The people did
not at once realize the meaning of this bombardment.
At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused curiosity.
Ferapóntov’s wife, who till then had not ceased wailing under the shed, became
quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the gate, listening to the sounds and
looking in silence at the people.
The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively curiosity everyone
tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they flew over their heads. Several
people came round the corner talking eagerly.
“What force!” remarked one. “Knocked the roof and ceiling all to splinters!”
“Routed up the earth like a pig,” said another.
“That’s grand, it bucks one up!” laughed the first. “Lucky you jumped aside,
or it would have wiped you out!”
Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had fallen on
a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now with the swift
sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the agreeable intermittent whistle of a
shell, flew over people’s heads incessantly, but not one fell close by, they all flew
over. Alpátych was getting into his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.
“What are you staring at?” he shouted to the cook, who in her red skirt, with
sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped to the corner to listen to
what was being said.
“What marvels!” she exclaimed, but hearing her master’s voice she turned
back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.
Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping
downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the street,
something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke.
“Scoundrel, what are you doing?” shouted the innkeeper, rushing to the cook.
At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different sides,
the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently with pale faces
round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was her wailing.
“Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don’t let me die! My good souls!...”
Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her thigh
broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen. Alpátych, his
coachman, Ferapóntov’s wife and children and the house porter were all sitting
in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns, the whistling of projectiles, and the
piteous moaning of the cook, which rose above the other sounds, did not cease
for a moment. The mistress rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came
into the cellar asked in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband who
had remained in the street. A shopman who entered told her that her husband had
gone with others to the cathedral, whence they were fetching the wonder-
working icon of Smolénsk.
Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpátych left the cellar and
stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was clouded
with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon shone strangely.
Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a hush seemed to reign over the
town, broken only by the rustle of footsteps, the moaning, the distant cries, and
the crackle of fires which seemed widespread everywhere. The cook’s moans
had now subsided. On two sides black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread
from the fires. Through the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or ran
confusedly in different directions like ants from a ruined ant-hill. Several of
them ran into Ferapóntov’s yard before Alpátych’s eyes. Alpátych went out to
the gate. A retreating regiment, thronging and hurrying, blocked the street.
Noticing him, an officer said: “The town is being abandoned. Get away, get
away!” and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted:
“I’ll teach you to run into the yards!”
Alpátych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him to set off.
Ferapóntov’s whole household came out too, following Alpátych and the
coachman. The women, who had been silent till then, suddenly began to wail as
they looked at the fires—the smoke and even the flames of which could be seen
in the failing twilight—and as if in reply the same kind of lamentation was heard
from other parts of the street. Inside the shed Alpátych and the coachman
arranged the tangled reins and traces of their horses with trembling hands.
As Alpátych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers in
Ferapóntov’s open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and knapsacks with
flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapóntov returned and entered his shop.
On seeing the soldiers he was about to shout at them, but suddenly stopped and,
clutching at his hair, burst into sobs and laughter:
“Loot everything, lads! Don’t let those devils get it!” he cried, taking some
bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.
Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on filling their
bags. On seeing Alpátych, Ferapóntov turned to him:
“Russia is done for!” he cried. “Alpátych, I’ll set the place on fire myself.
We’re done for!...” and Ferapóntov ran into the yard.
Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking it
completely, so that Alpátych could not pass out and had to wait. Ferapóntov’s
wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting till it was possible to drive
out.
Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone out
amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the Dnieper
Alpátych’s cart and that of the innkeeper’s wife, which were slowly moving
amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had to stop. In a side street near
the crossroads where the vehicles had stopped, a house and some shops were on
fire. This fire was already burning itself out. The flames now died down and
were lost in the black smoke, now suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up
with strange distinctness the faces of the people crowding at the crossroads.
Black figures flitted about before the fire, and through the incessant crackling of
the flames talking and shouting could be heard. Seeing that his trap would not be
able to move on for some time, Alpátych got down and turned into the side street
to look at the fire. Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards
near it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging burning
beams into another yard across the street, while others carried bundles of hay.
Alpátych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn which was
blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back wall had fallen in, the
wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters were alight. The crowd was
evidently watching for the roof to fall in, and Alpátych watched for it too.
“Alpátych!” a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.
“Mercy on us! Your excellency!” answered Alpátych, immediately
recognizing the voice of his young prince.
Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was looking at
Alpátych from the back of the crowd.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“Your... your excellency,” stammered Alpátych and broke into sobs. “Are we
really lost? Master!...”
“Why are you here?” Prince Andrew repeated.
At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master’s pale worn
face. Alpátych told how he had been sent there and how difficult it was to get
away.
“Are we really quite lost, your excellency?” he asked again.
Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his knee
began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his sister:
“Smolénsk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the enemy
within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at once when you
will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyázh.”
Having written this and given the paper to Alpátych, he told him how to
arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the boy’s tutor, and
how and where to let him know immediately. Before he had had time to finish
giving these instructions, a chief of staff followed by a suite galloped up to him.
“You are a colonel?” shouted the chief of staff with a German accent, in a
voice familiar to Prince Andrew. “Houses are set on fire in your presence and
you stand by! What does this mean? You will answer for it!” shouted Berg, who
was now assistant to the chief of staff of the commander of the left flank of the
infantry of the first army, a place, as Berg said, “very agreeable and well en
évidence.”
Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to
Alpátych.
“So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by the tenth I don’t
receive news that they have all got away I shall have to throw up everything and
come myself to Bald Hills.”
“Prince,” said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, “I only spoke because I have
to obey orders, because I always do obey exactly.... You must please excuse me,”
he went on apologetically.
Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for a moment and
wreaths of black smoke rolled from under the roof. There was another terrible
crash and something huge collapsed.
“Ou-rou-rou!” yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the collapsing roof of
the barn, the burning grain in which diffused a cakelike aroma all around. The
flames flared up again, lighting the animated, delighted, exhausted faces of the
spectators.
The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:
“It’s fine, lads! Now it’s raging... It’s fine!”
“That’s the owner himself,” cried several voices.
“Well then,” continued Prince Andrew to Alpátych, “report to them as I have
told you”; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute beside him, he
touched his horse and rode down the side street.
CHAPTER V
From Smolénsk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the enemy. On the
tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was marching along
the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills. Heat and drought had
continued for more than three weeks. Each day fleecy clouds floated across the
sky and occasionally veiled the sun, but toward evening the sky cleared again
and the sun set in reddish-brown mist. Heavy night dews alone refreshed the
earth. The unreaped corn was scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up.
The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched meadows.
Only at night and in the forests while the dew lasted was there any freshness. But
on the road, the highroad along which the troops marched, there was no such
freshness even at night or when the road passed through the forest; the dew was
imperceptible on the sandy dust churned up more than six inches deep. As soon
as day dawned the march began. The artillery and baggage wagons moved
noiselessly through the deep dust that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and
the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft, choking, hot dust that never cooled
even at night. Some of this dust was kneaded by the feet and wheels, while the
rest rose and hung like a cloud over the troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and
nostrils, and worst of all in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along
that road. The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and through
the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked eye at the sun,
which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded sky. There was no wind,
and the men choked in that motionless atmosphere. They marched with
handkerchiefs tied over their noses and mouths. When they passed through a
village they all rushed to the wells and fought for the water and drank it down to
the mud.
Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of that
regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving and giving
orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolénsk and its abandonment made an
epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger against the foe made him forget his
own sorrow. He was entirely devoted to the affairs of his regiment and was
considerate and kind to his men and officers. In the regiment they called him
“our prince,” were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only
to those of his regiment, to Timókhin and the like—people quite new to him,
belonging to a different world and who could not know and understand his past.
As soon as he came across a former acquaintance or anyone from the staff, he
bristled up immediately and grew spiteful, ironical, and contemptuous.
Everything that reminded him of his past was repugnant to him, and so in his
relations with that former circle he confined himself to trying to do his duty and
not to be unfair.
In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to Prince
Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolénsk on the sixth of August
(he considered that it could and should have been defended) and after his sick
father had had to flee to Moscow, abandoning to pillage his dearly beloved Bald
Hills which he had built and peopled. But despite this, thanks to his regiment,
Prince Andrew had something to think about entirely apart from general
questions. Two days previously he had received news that his father, son, and
sister had left for Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do at Bald
Hills, Prince Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment his own grief decided
that he must ride there.
He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on the march,
rode to his father’s estate where he had been born and spent his childhood.
Riding past the pond where there used always to be dozens of women chattering
as they rinsed their linen or beat it with wooden beetles, Prince Andrew noticed
that there was not a soul about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its
place and half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He
rode to the keeper’s lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of the drive and
the door stood open. Grass had already begun to grow on the garden paths, and
horses and calves were straying in the English park. Prince Andrew rode up to
the hothouse; some of the glass panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some
were overturned and others dried up. He called for Tarás the gardener, but no one
replied. Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden,
he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the plum trees
had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom Prince Andrew in his
childhood had often seen at the gate was sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a
bast shoe.
He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting on the
seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him strips of bast were
hanging on the broken and withered branch of a magnolia.
Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old garden had been
cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were wandering in front of the house
among the rosebushes. The shutters were all closed, except at one window which
was open. A little serf boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran into the house. Alpátych,
having sent his family away, was alone at Bald Hills and was sitting indoors
reading the Lives of the Saints. On hearing that Prince Andrew had come, he
went out with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning his coat, and, hastily stepping
up, without a word began weeping and kissing Prince Andrew’s knee.
Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to report on the
position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable had been removed to
Boguchárovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also been carted away. The hay and
the spring corn, of which Alpátych said there had been a remarkable crop that
year, had been commandeered by the troops and mown down while still green.
The peasants were ruined; some of them too had gone to Boguchárovo, only a
few remained.
Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:
“When did my father and sister leave?” meaning when did they leave for
Moscow.
Alpátych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for
Boguchárovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again went into
details concerning the estate management, asking for instructions.
“Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for them? We have
still six hundred quarters left,” he inquired.
“What am I to say to him?” thought Prince Andrew, looking down on the old
man’s bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the expression on his face that
the old man himself understood how untimely such questions were and only
asked them to allay his grief.
“Yes, let them have it,” replied Prince Andrew.
“If you noticed some disorder in the garden,” said Alpátych, “it was
impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent the night,
dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their commanding officer, to
hand in a complaint about it.”
“Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy occupies
the place?” asked Prince Andrew.
Alpátych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and suddenly with
a solemn gesture raised his arm.
“He is my refuge! His will be done!” he exclaimed.
A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow toward
the prince.
“Well, good-by!” said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpátych. “You must
go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go to the Ryazán estate
or to the one near Moscow.”
Alpátych clung to Prince Andrew’s leg and burst into sobs. Gently
disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the avenue at a
gallop.
The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly impassive on
the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last on which he was making the
bast shoe, and two little girls, running out from the hot house carrying in their
skirts plums they had plucked from the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew.
On seeing the young master, the elder one with frightened look clutched her
younger companion by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not
stopping to pick up some green plums they had dropped.
Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them see that
they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty frightened little girl, was
afraid of looking at her, and yet felt an irresistible desire to do so. A new
sensation of comfort and relief came over him when, seeing these girls, he
realized the existence of other human interests entirely aloof from his own and
just as legitimate as those that occupied him. Evidently these girls passionately
desired one thing—to carry away and eat those green plums without being
caught—and Prince Andrew shared their wish for the success of their enterprise.
He could not resist looking at them once more. Believing their danger past, they
sprang from their ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill little voices
and holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned feet scampered merrily and
quickly across the meadow grass.
Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the dusty
highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from Bald Hills he
again came out on the road and overtook his regiment at its halting place by the
dam of a small pond. It was past one o’clock. The sun, a red ball through the
dust, burned and scorched his back intolerably through his black coat. The dust
always hung motionless above the buzz of talk that came from the resting troops.
There was no wind. As he crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the ooze and
freshness of the pond. He longed to get into that water, however dirty it might
be, and he glanced round at the pool from whence came sounds of shrieks and
laughter. The small, muddy, green pond had risen visibly more than a foot,
flooding the dam, because it was full of the naked white bodies of soldiers with
brick-red hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing about in it. All this naked
white human flesh, laughing and shrieking, floundered about in that dirty pool
like carp stuffed into a watering can, and the suggestion of merriment in that
floundering mass rendered it specially pathetic.
One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince Andrew
knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed himself, stepped
back to get a good run, and plunged into the water; another, a dark
noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood up to his waist in the
water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure and snorted with satisfaction as he
poured the water over his head with hands blackened to the wrists. There were
sounds of men slapping one another, yelling, and puffing.
Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was healthy,
white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timókhin, with his red little nose, standing on
the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt confused at seeing the prince, but
made up his mind to address him nevertheless.
“It’s very nice, your excellency! Wouldn’t you like to?” said he.
“It’s dirty,” replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.
“We’ll clear it out for you in a minute,” said Timókhin, and, still undressed,
ran off to clear the men out of the pond.
“The prince wants to bathe.”
“What prince? Ours?” said many voices, and the men were in such haste to
clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He decided that he would rather
wash himself with water in the barn.
“Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!” he thought, and he looked at his own naked
body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust and horror he did
not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that immense number of bodies
splashing about in the dirty pond.
On the seventh of August Prince Bagratión wrote as follows from his quarters
at Mikháylovna on the Smolénsk road:
Dear Count Aléxis Andréevich—(He was writing to Arakchéev but knew that
his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore weighed every word in it
to the best of his ability.)
I expect the Minister (Barclay de Tolly) has already reported the abandonment
of Smolénsk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and the whole army is in despair
that this most important place has been wantonly abandoned. I, for my part,
begged him personally most urgently and finally wrote him, but nothing would
induce him to consent. I swear to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a
fix as never before and might have lost half his army but could not have taken
Smolénsk. Our troops fought, and are fighting, as never before. With fifteen
thousand men I held the enemy at bay for thirty-five hours and beat him; but he
would not hold out even for fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain on our army,
and as for him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If he reports that our losses
were great, it is not true; perhaps about four thousand, not more, and not even
that; but even were they ten thousand, that’s war! But the enemy has lost
masses....
What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They would
have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water for men or horses.
He gave me his word he would not retreat, but suddenly sent instructions that he
was retiring that night. We cannot fight in this way, or we may soon bring the
enemy to Moscow....
There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you should
make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats! You would set all
Russia against you and everyone of us would feel ashamed to wear the uniform.
If it has come to this—we must fight as long as Russia can and as long as there
are men able to stand....
One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may perhaps be
good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad but execrable, yet to
him is entrusted the fate of our whole country.... I am really frantic with
vexation; forgive my writing boldly. It is clear that the man who advocates the
conclusion of a peace, and that the Minister should command the army, does not
love our sovereign and desires the ruin of us all. So I write you frankly: call out
the militia. For the Minister is leading these visitors after him to Moscow in a
most masterly way. The whole army feels great suspicion of the Imperial aide-
de-camp Wolzogen. He is said to be more Napoleon’s man than ours, and he is
always advising the Minister. I am not merely civil to him but obey him like a
corporal, though I am his senior. This is painful, but, loving my benefactor and
sovereign, I submit. Only I am sorry for the Emperor that he entrusts our fine
army to such as he. Consider that on our retreat we have lost by fatigue and left
in the hospital more than fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would
not have happened. Tell me, for God’s sake, what will Russia, our mother
Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning our good and
gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings of hatred and shame in
all our subjects? What are we scared at and of whom are we afraid? I am not to
blame that the Minister is vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad
qualities. The whole army bewails it and calls down curses upon him....
CHAPTER VI
Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of human life
one may discriminate between those in which substance prevails and those in
which form prevails. To the latter—as distinguished from village, country,
provincial, or even Moscow life—we may allot Petersburg life, and especially
the life of its salons. That life of the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805
we had made peace and had again quarreled with Bonaparte and had made
constitutions and unmade them again, but the salons of Anna Pávlovna and
Hélène remained just as they had been—the one seven and the other five years
before. At Anna Pávlovna’s they talked with perplexity of Bonaparte’s successes
just as before and saw in them and in the subservience shown to him by the
European sovereigns a malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was to
cause unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna Pávlovna
was the representative. And in Hélène’s salon, which Rumyántsev himself
honored with his visits, regarding Hélène as a remarkably intelligent woman,
they talked with the same ecstasy in 1812 as in 1808 of the “great nation” and
the “great man,” and regretted our rupture with France, a rupture which,
according to them, ought to be promptly terminated by peace.
Of late, since the Emperor’s return from the army, there had been some
excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some demonstrations of
hostility to one another, but each camp retained its own tendency. In Anna
Pávlovna’s circle only those Frenchmen were admitted who were deep-rooted
legitimists, and patriotic views were expressed to the effect that one ought not to
go to the French theater and that to maintain the French troupe was costing the
government as much as a whole army corps. The progress of the war was
eagerly followed, and only the reports most flattering to our army were
circulated. In the French circle of Hélène and Rumyántsev the reports of the
cruelty of the enemy and of the war were contradicted and all Napoleon’s
attempts at conciliation were discussed. In that circle they discountenanced those
who advised hurried preparations for a removal to Kazán of the court and the
girls’ educational establishments under the patronage of the Dowager Empress.
In Hélène’s circle the war in general was regarded as a series of formal
demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the view prevailed
expressed by Bilíbin—who now in Petersburg was quite at home in Hélène’s
house, which every clever man was obliged to visit—that not by gunpowder but
by those who invented it would matters be settled. In that circle the Moscow
enthusiasm—news of which had reached Petersburg simultaneously with the
Emperor’s return—was ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly, though with
much caution.
Anna Pávlovna’s circle on the contrary was enraptured by this enthusiasm and
spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the ancients. Prince Vasíli, who
still occupied his former important posts, formed a connecting link between
these two circles. He visited his “good friend Anna Pávlovna” as well as his
daughter’s “diplomatic salon,” and often in his constant comings and goings
between the two camps became confused and said at Hélène’s what he should
have said at Anna Pávlovna’s and vice versa.
Soon after the Emperor’s return Prince Vasíli in a conversation about the war
at Anna Pávlovna’s severely condemned Barclay de Tolly, but was undecided as
to who ought to be appointed commander in chief. One of the visitors, usually
spoken of as “a man of great merit,” having described how he had that day seen
Kutúzov, the newly chosen chief of the Petersburg militia, presiding over the
enrollment of recruits at the Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest that
Kutúzov would be the man to satisfy all requirements.
Anna Pávlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutúzov had done
nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.
“I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility,” Prince Vasíli
interrupted, “but they did not listen to me. I told them his election as chief of the
militia would not please the Emperor. They did not listen to me.
“It’s all this mania for opposition,” he went on. “And who for? It is all
because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those Muscovites,” Prince
Vasíli continued, forgetting for a moment that though at Hélène’s one had to
ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at Anna Pávlovna’s one had to be ecstatic
about it. But he retrieved his mistake at once. “Now, is it suitable that Count
Kutúzov, the oldest general in Russia, should preside at that tribunal? He will get
nothing for his pains! How could they make a man commander in chief who
cannot mount a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the very worst
morals! A good reputation he made for himself at Bucharest! I don’t speak of his
capacity as a general, but at a time like this how they appoint a decrepit, blind
old man, positively blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can’t see
anything. To play blindman’s buff? He can’t see at all!”
No one replied to his remarks.
This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the twenty-ninth of
July Kutúzov received the title of Prince. This might indicate a wish to get rid of
him, and therefore Prince Vasíli’s opinion continued to be correct though he was
not now in any hurry to express it. But on the eighth of August a committee,
consisting of Field Marshal Saltykóv, Arakchéev, Vyazmítinov, Lopukhín, and
Kochubéy met to consider the progress of the war. This committee came to the
conclusion that our failures were due to a want of unity in the command and
though the members of the committee were aware of the Emperor’s dislike of
Kutúzov, after a short deliberation they agreed to advise his appointment as
commander in chief. That same day Kutúzov was appointed commander in chief
with full powers over the armies and over the whole region occupied by them.
On the ninth of August Prince Vasíli at Anna Pávlovna’s again met the “man
of great merit.” The latter was very attentive to Anna Pávlovna because he
wanted to be appointed director of one of the educational establishments for
young ladies. Prince Vasíli entered the room with the air of a happy conqueror
who has attained the object of his desires.
“Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutúzov is field marshal! All
dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At last we have a man!”
said he, glancing sternly and significantly round at everyone in the drawing
room.
The “man of great merit,” despite his desire to obtain the post of director,
could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasíli of his former opinion. Though
this was impolite to Prince Vasíli in Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room, and also to
Anna Pávlovna herself who had received the news with delight, he could not
resist the temptation.
“But, Prince, they say he is blind!” said he, reminding Prince Vasíli of his own
words.
“Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough,” said Prince Vasíli rapidly, in a deep
voice and with a slight cough—the voice and cough with which he was wont to
dispose of all difficulties.
“He sees well enough,” he added. “And what I am so pleased about,” he went
on, “is that our sovereign has given him full powers over all the armies and the
whole region—powers no commander in chief ever had before. He is a second
autocrat,” he concluded with a victorious smile.
“God grant it! God grant it!” said Anna Pávlovna.
The “man of great merit,” who was still a novice in court circles, wishing to
flatter Anna Pávlovna by defending her former position on this question,
observed:
“It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutúzov those powers. They
say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read, when he said to Kutúzov:
‘Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you this honor.’”
“Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech,” said Anna Pávlovna.
“Oh, no, no!” warmly rejoined Prince Vasíli, who would not now yield
Kutúzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutúzov was not only admirable himself, but
was adored by everybody. “No, that’s impossible,” said he, “for our sovereign
appreciated him so highly before.”
“God grant only that Prince Kutúzov assumes real power and does not allow
anyone to put a spoke in his wheel,” observed Anna Pávlovna.
Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasíli said in a whisper:
“I know for a fact that Kutúzov made it an absolute condition that the
Tsarévich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to the
Emperor?”
And Prince Vasíli repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by
Kutúzov to the Emperor. “I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor reward
him if he does right.”
“Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutúzov! I have known him a long time!”
“They even say,” remarked the “man of great merit” who did not yet possess
courtly tact, “that his excellency made it an express condition that the sovereign
himself should not be with the army.”
As soon as he said this both Prince Vasíli and Anna Pávlovna turned away
from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at his naïveté.
CHAPTER VII
While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already passed
Smolénsk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon’s historian
Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to justify his hero says that he was
drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He is as right as other historians
who look for the explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as
right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn to
Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law of
retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for events that
subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in, confusing the whole matter.
A good chessplayer having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss
resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the opening, but
forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none
of his moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays
attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more complex
than this is the game of war, which occurs under certain limits of time, and
where it is not one will that manipulates lifeless objects, but everything results
from innumerable conflicts of various wills!
After Smolénsk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobúzh at Vyázma, and
then at Tsárevo-Zaymíshche, but it happened that owing to a conjunction of
innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give battle till they reached
Borodinó, seventy miles from Moscow. From Vyázma Napoleon ordered a direct
advance on Moscow.
Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacrée des peuples
d’Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables églises en forme de pagodes
chinoises, * this Moscow gave Napoleon’s imagination no rest. On the march
from Vyázma to Tsárevo-Zaymíshche he rode his light bay bobtailed ambler
accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his pages, and aides-de-camp.
Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind to question a Russian prisoner
captured by the cavalry. Followed by Lelorgne d’Ideville, an interpreter, he
overtook Napoleon at a gallop and reined in his horse with an amused
expression.
* “Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the
sacred city of Alexander’s people, Moscow with its
innumerable churches shaped like Chinese pagodas.”
“Well?” asked Napoleon.
“One of Plátov’s Cossacks says that Plátov’s corps is joining up with the main
army and that Kutúzov has been appointed commander in chief. He is a very
shrewd and garrulous fellow.”
Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the man
to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped off, and an
hour later, Lavrúshka, the serf Denísov had handed over to Rostóv, rode up to
Napoleon in an orderly’s jacket and on a French cavalry saddle, with a merry,
and tipsy face. Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began questioning him.
“You are a Cossack?”
“Yes, a Cossack, your Honor.”
“The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon’s plain
appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental mind the
presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the incidents of the
war,” says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality Lavrúshka, having got drunk
the day before and left his master dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the
village in quest of chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him
prisoner. Lavrúshka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who have seen
all sorts of things, consider it necessary to do everything in a mean and cunning
way, are ready to render any sort of service to their master, and are keen at
guessing their master’s baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and
pettiness.
Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had easily
and surely recognized, Lavrúshka was not in the least abashed but merely did his
utmost to gain his new master’s favor.
He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon’s presence could no
more intimidate him than Rostóv’s, or a sergeant major’s with the rods, would
have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant major or Napoleon could
deprive him of.
So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the orderlies. Much
of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the Russians thought they
would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrúshka screwed up his eyes and considered.
In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see cunning in
everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.
“It’s like this,” he said thoughtfully, “if there’s a battle soon, yours will win.
That’s right. But if three days pass, then after that, well, then that same battle
will not soon be over.”
Lelorgne d’Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon thus: “If a
battle takes place within the next three days the French will win, but if later, God
knows what will happen.” Napoleon did not smile, though he was evidently in
high good humor, and he ordered these words to be repeated.
Lavrúshka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending not to know
who Napoleon was, added:
“We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in the
world, but we are a different matter...”—without knowing why or how this bit of
boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.
The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase, and Bonaparte
smiled. “The young Cossack made his mighty interlocutor smile,” says Thiers.
After riding a few paces in silence, Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he
wished to see how the news that he was talking to the Emperor himself, to that
very Emperor who had written his immortally victorious name on the Pyramids,
would affect this enfant du Don. *
* “Child of the Don.”
“Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I share your
sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor a prince, nor a
commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything come straight to me.
Good-by, my dear boy.”
Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter had left
the room Kutúzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his unfinished novel,
Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but after that
interview with Kutúzov he went back to his regiment reassured as to the general
course of affairs and as to the man to whom it had been entrusted. The more he
realized the absence of all personal motive in that old man—in whom there
seemed to remain only the habit of passions, and in place of an intellect
(grouping events and drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly to
contemplate the course of events—the more reassured he was that everything
would be as it should. “He will not bring in any plan of his own. He will not
devise or undertake anything,” thought Prince Andrew, “but he will hear
everything, remember everything, and put everything in its place. He will not
hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He understands that there is
something stronger and more important than his own will—the inevitable course
of events, and he can see them and grasp their significance, and seeing that
significance can refrain from meddling and renounce his personal wish directed
to something else. And above all,” thought Prince Andrew, “one believes in him
because he’s Russian, despite the novel by Genlis and the French proverbs, and
because his voice shook when he said: ‘What they have brought us to!’ and had a
sob in it when he said he would ‘make them eat horseflesh!’”
On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity and general
approval were founded with which, despite court influences, the popular choice
of Kutúzov as commander in chief was received.
CHAPTER XVII
After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual course,
and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to remember the recent days
of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to believe that Russia was really in danger
and that the members of the English Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready
to sacrifice everything for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor
everyone had displayed during the Emperor’s stay was the call for contributions
of men and money, a necessity that as soon as the promises had been made
assumed a legal, official form and became unavoidable.
With the enemy’s approach to Moscow, the Moscovites’ view of their situation
did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even more frivolous, as
always happens with people who see a great danger approaching. At the
approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in
the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the
danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it
is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man’s
power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is
therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what
is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to
the second. So it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since
people had been as gay in Moscow as that year.
Rostopchín’s broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a potman, and
a Moscow burgher called Karpúshka Chigírin, “who—having been a militiaman
and having had rather too much at the pub—heard that Napoleon wished to
come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the French in very bad language, came out
of the drink shop, and, under the sign of the eagle, began to address the
assembled people,” were read and discussed, together with the latest of Vasíli
Lvóvich Púshkin’s bouts rimés.
In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these broadsheets,
and some liked the way Karpúshka jeered at the French, saying: “They will swell
up with Russian cabbage, burst with our buckwheat porridge, and choke
themselves with cabbage soup. They are all dwarfs and one peasant woman will
toss three of them with a hayfork.” Others did not like that tone and said it was
stupid and vulgar. It was said that Rostopchín had expelled all Frenchmen and
even all foreigners from Moscow, and that there had been some spies and agents
of Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to introduce Rostopchín’s
witty remark on that occasion. The foreigners were deported to Nízhni by boat,
and Rostopchín had said to them in French: “Rentrez en vous-mêmes; entrez
dans la barque, et n’en faites pas une barque de Charon.” * There was talk of all
the government offices having been already removed from Moscow, and to this
Shinshín’s witticism was added—that for that alone Moscow ought to be grateful
to Napoleon. It was said that Mamónov’s regiment would cost him eight hundred
thousand rubles, and that Bezúkhov had spent even more on his, but that the best
thing about Bezúkhov’s action was that he himself was going to don a uniform
and ride at the head of his regiment without charging anything for the show.
* “Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to
make it a barque of Charon.”
“You don’t spare anyone,” said Julie Drubetskáya as she collected and pressed
together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed fingers.
Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a farewell
soiree.
“Bezúkhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What pleasure is
there to be so caustique?”
“A forfeit!” cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie called “mon
chevalier,” and who was going with her to Nízhni.
In Julie’s set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been agreed that they
would speak nothing but Russian and that those who made a slip and spoke
French should pay fines to the Committee of Voluntary Contributions.
“Another forfeit for a Gallicism,” said a Russian writer who was present.
“‘What pleasure is there to be’ is not Russian!”
“You spare no one,” continued Julie to the young man without heeding the
author’s remark.
“For caustique—I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay again for
the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I won’t be responsible,” she
remarked, turning to the author: “I have neither the money nor the time, like
Prince Galítsyn, to engage a master to teach me Russian!”
“Ah, here he is!” she added. “Quand on... No, no,” she said to the militia
officer, “you won’t catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its rays!” and she
smiled amiably at Pierre. “We were just talking of you,” she said with the facility
in lying natural to a society woman. “We were saying that your regiment would
be sure to be better than Mamónov’s.”
“Oh, don’t talk to me of my regiment,” replied Pierre, kissing his hostess’
hand and taking a seat beside her. “I am so sick of it.”
“You will, of course, command it yourself?” said Julie, directing a sly,
sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.
The latter in Pierre’s presence had ceased to be caustic, and his face expressed
perplexity as to what Julie’s smile might mean. In spite of his absent-mindedness
and good nature, Pierre’s personality immediately checked any attempt to
ridicule him to his face.
“No,” said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. “I should
make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I should hardly be
able to climb onto a horse.”
Among those whom Julie’s guests happened to choose to gossip about were
the Rostóvs.
“I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way,” said Julie. “And he is so
unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The Razumóvskis wanted to buy his
house and his estate near Moscow, but it drags on and on. He asks too much.”
“No, I think the sale will come off in a few days,” said someone. “Though it is
madness to buy anything in Moscow now.”
“Why?” asked Julie. “You don’t think Moscow is in danger?”
“Then why are you leaving?”
“I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is going:
and besides—I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon.”
“Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen.”
“If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off all his debts,”
said the militia officer, speaking of Rostóv.
“A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so long in
Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago. Natalie is quite well
again now, isn’t she?” Julie asked Pierre with a knowing smile.
“They are waiting for their younger son,” Pierre replied. “He joined
Obolénski’s Cossacks and went to Bélaya Tsérkov where the regiment is being
formed. But now they have had him transferred to my regiment and are
expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave long ago, but the countess
won’t on any account leave Moscow till her son returns.”
“I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkhárovs’. Natalie has recovered
her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily some people get over
everything!”
“Get over what?” inquired Pierre, looking displeased.
Julie smiled.
“You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de Souza’s
novels.”
“What knights? What do you mean?” demanded Pierre, blushing.
“Oh, come, my dear count! C’est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous admire, ma
parole d’honneur!” *
* “It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!”
“Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her,” said Pierre.
“I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their estate near
Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew.”
“Well, and how is she?” asked Pierre.
“She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is quite a
romance. Nicholas Rostóv! She was surrounded, and they wanted to kill her and
had wounded some of her people. He rushed in and saved her....”
“Another romance,” said the militia officer. “Really, this general flight has
been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche is one and Princess
Bolkónskaya another.”
“Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu amoureuse du jeune
homme.” *
* “A little bit in love with the young man.”
On his way home from Vorontsóvo, as he was passing the Bolótnoe Place
Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lóbnoe Place, stopped and got out of his
trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being flogged. The flogging was
only just over, and the executioner was releasing from the flogging bench a stout
man with red whiskers, in blue stockings and a green jacket, who was moaning
piteously. Another criminal, thin and pale, stood near. Judging by their faces they
were both Frenchmen. With a frightened and suffering look resembling that on
the thin Frenchman’s face, Pierre pushed his way in through the crowd.
“What is it? Who is it? What is it for?” he kept asking.
But the attention of the crowd—officials, burghers, shopkeepers, peasants, and
women in cloaks and in pelisses—was so eagerly centered on what was passing
in Lóbnoe Place that no one answered him. The stout man rose, frowned,
shrugged his shoulders, and evidently trying to appear firm began to pull on his
jacket without looking about him, but suddenly his lips trembled and he began to
cry, in the way full-blooded grown-up men cry, though angry with himself for
doing so. In the crowd people began talking loudly, to stifle their feelings of pity
as it seemed to Pierre.
“He’s cook to some prince.”
“Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets his teeth
on edge!” said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind Pierre, when the
Frenchman began to cry.
The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be appreciated.
Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch in dismay the
executioner who was undressing the other man.
Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went back to his
trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took his seat. As they drove
along he shuddered and exclaimed several times so audibly that the coachman
asked him:
“What is your pleasure?”
“Where are you going?” shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to
Lubyánka Street.
“To the Governor’s, as you ordered,” answered the coachman.
“Fool! Idiot!” shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman—a thing he rarely did.
“Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!” “I must get away this very
day,” he murmured to himself.
At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the Lóbnoe
Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he could no longer remain
in Moscow and would leave for the army that very day that it seemed to him that
either he had told the coachman this or that the man ought to have known it for
himself.
On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstáfey—his head coachman who
knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow—that he
would leave that night for the army at Mozháysk, and that his saddle horses
should be sent there. This could not all be arranged that day, so on Evstáfey’s
representation Pierre had to put off his departure till next day to allow time for
the relay horses to be sent on in advance.
On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain, and after
dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night in Perkhúshkovo,
he learned that there had been a great battle that evening. (This was the battle of
Shevárdino.) He was told that there in Perkhúshkovo the earth trembled from the
firing, but nobody could answer his questions as to who had won. At dawn next
day Pierre was approaching Mozháysk.
Every house in Mozháysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the hostel where
Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no room to be had. It was
full of officers.
Everywhere in Mozháysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on the
march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and cannon were
everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and the farther he left
Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into that sea of troops the more was
he overcome by restless agitation and a new and joyful feeling he had not
experienced before. It was a feeling akin to what he had felt at the Slobóda
Palace during the Emperor’s visit—a sense of the necessity of undertaking
something and sacrificing something. He now experienced a glad consciousness
that everything that constitutes men’s happiness—the comforts of life, wealth,
even life itself—is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away, compared with
something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did not try to determine for
whom and for what he felt such particular delight in sacrificing everything. He
was not occupied with the question of what to sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing
in itself afforded him a new and joyous sensation.
CHAPTER XIX
On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevárdino Redoubt was
fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either side, and on the twenty-
sixth the battle of Borodinó itself took place.
Why and how were the battles of Shevárdino and Borodinó given and
accepted? Why was the battle of Borodinó fought? There was not the least sense
in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate result for the Russians
was, and was bound to be, that we were brought nearer to the destruction of
Moscow—which we feared more than anything in the world; and for the French
its immediate result was that they were brought nearer to the destruction of their
whole army—which they feared more than anything in the world. What the
result must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutúzov
accepted that battle.
If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it must have
been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen hundred miles and giving
battle with a probability of losing a quarter of his army, he was advancing to
certain destruction, and it must have been equally clear to Kutúzov that by
accepting battle and risking the loss of a quarter of his army he would certainly
lose Moscow. For Kutúzov this was mathematically clear, as it is that if when
playing draughts I have one man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly
lose, and therefore should not exchange. When my opponent has sixteen men
and I have fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than he, but when I have
exchanged thirteen more men he will be three times as strong as I am.
Before the battle of Borodinó our strength in proportion to the French was
about as five to six, but after that battle it was little more than one to two:
previously we had a hundred thousand against a hundred and twenty thousand;
afterwards little more than fifty thousand against a hundred thousand. Yet the
shrewd and experienced Kutúzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon, who was
said to be a commander of genius, gave it, losing a quarter of his army and
lengthening his lines of communication still more. If it is said that he expected to
end the campaign by occupying Moscow as he had ended a previous campaign
by occupying Vienna, there is much evidence to the contrary. Napoleon’s
historians themselves tell us that from Smolénsk onwards he wished to stop,
knew the danger of his extended position, and knew that the occupation of
Moscow would not be the end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolénsk the
state in which Russian towns were left to him, and had not received a single
reply to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate.
In giving and accepting battle at Borodinó, Kutúzov acted involuntarily and
irrationally. But later on, to fit what had occurred, the historians provided
cunningly devised evidence of the foresight and genius of the generals who, of
all the blind tools of history were the most enslaved and involuntary.
The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes furnish the
whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to accustom ourselves to the
fact that for our epoch histories of that kind are meaningless.
On the other question, how the battle of Borodinó and the preceding battle of
Shevárdino were fought, there also exists a definite and well-known, but quite
false, conception. All the historians describe the affair as follows:
The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolénsk sought out for itself
the best position for a general engagement and found such a position at
Borodinó.
The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the left of the
highroad (from Moscow to Smolénsk) and almost at a right angle to it, from
Borodinó to Utítsa, at the very place where the battle was fought.
In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set up on the
Shevárdino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth, we are told,
Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on the twenty-sixth,
attacked the whole Russian army, which was in position on the field of Borodinó.
So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares to look into
the matter can easily convince himself.
The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the contrary, during the
retreat passed many positions better than Borodinó. They did not stop at any one
of these positions because Kutúzov did not wish to occupy a position he had not
himself chosen, because the popular demand for a battle had not yet expressed
itself strongly enough, and because Milorádovich had not yet arrived with the
militia, and for many other reasons. The fact is that other positions they had
passed were stronger, and that the position at Borodinó (the one where the battle
was fought), far from being strong, was no more a position than any other spot
one might find in the Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at hazard.
Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of Borodinó to
the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that is, the position on which the
battle took place), but never till the twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think
that a battle might be fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there
were no entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the
twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the position
of the Shevárdino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless in front of the
position where the battle was accepted. Why was it more strongly fortified than
any other post? And why were all efforts exhausted and six thousand men
sacrificed to defend it till late at night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol
would have sufficed to observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position on
which the battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the Shevárdino
Redoubt was not an advanced post of that position, we have the fact that up to
the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and Bagratión were convinced that the
Shevárdino Redoubt was the left flank of the position, and that Kutúzov himself
in his report, written in hot haste after the battle, speaks of the Shevárdino
Redoubt as the left flank of the position. It was much later, when reports on the
battle of Borodinó were written at leisure, that the incorrect and extraordinary
statement was invented (probably to justify the mistakes of a commander in
chief who had to be represented as infallible) that the Shevárdino Redoubt was
an advanced post—whereas in reality it was simply a fortified point on the left
flank—and that the battle of Borodinó was fought by us on an entrenched
position previously selected, whereas it was fought on a quite unexpected spot
which was almost unentrenched.
The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river Kolochá—
which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an acute angle—so that the
left flank was at Shevárdino, the right flank near the village of Nóvoe, and the
center at Borodinó at the confluence of the rivers Kolochá and Vóyna.
To anyone who looks at the field of Borodinó without thinking of how the
battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the river Kolochá, presents
itself as obvious for an army whose object was to prevent an enemy from
advancing along the Smolénsk road to Moscow.
Napoleon, riding to Valúevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as the history
books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utítsa to Borodinó (he could
not have seen that position because it did not exist), nor did he see an advanced
post of the Russian army, but while pursuing the Russian rearguard he came
upon the left flank of the Russian position—at the Shevárdino Redoubt—and
unexpectedly for the Russians moved his army across the Kolochá. And the
Russians, not having time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left
wing from the position they had intended to occupy and took up a new position
which had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By crossing to the other side
of the Kolochá to the left of the highroad, Napoleon shifted the whole
forthcoming battle from right to left (looking from the Russian side) and
transferred it to the plain between Utítsa, Semënovsk, and Borodinó—a plain no
more advantageous as a position than any other plain in Russia—and there the
whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took place.
Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to the
Kolochá, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the redoubt but
had begun the attack next morning, no one would have doubted that the
Shevárdino Redoubt was the left flank of our position, and the battle would have
taken place where we expected it. In that case we should probably have defended
the Shevárdino Redoubt—our left flank—still more obstinately. We should have
attacked Napoleon in the center or on the right, and the engagement would have
taken place on the twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But
as the attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the retreat of our
rear guard (that is, immediately after the fight at Gridnëva), and as the Russian
commanders did not wish, or were not in time, to begin a general engagement
then on the evening of the twenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of
Borodinó was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss of
the one fought on the twenty-sixth.
After the loss of the Shevárdino Redoubt, we found ourselves on the morning
of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank, and were forced to bend
it back and hastily entrench it where it chanced to be.
Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by weak,
unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that position was increased by
the fact that the Russian commanders—not having fully realized what had
happened, namely the loss of our position on the left flank and the shifting of the
whole field of the forthcoming battle from right to left—maintained their
extended position from the village of Nóvoe to Utítsa, and consequently had to
move their forces from right to left during the battle. So it happened that
throughout the whole battle the Russians opposed the entire French army
launched against our left flank with but half as many men. (Poniatowski’s action
against Utítsa, and Uvárov’s on the right flank against the French, were actions
distinct from the main course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodinó did not
take place at all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders’ mistakes even at the
cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian army and people) it has been
described. The battle of Borodinó was not fought on a chosen and entrenched
position with forces only slightly weaker than those of the enemy, but, as a result
of the loss of the Shevárdino Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of
Borodinó on an open and almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as
numerous as the French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not
merely unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive result, but
unthinkable to keep an army even from complete disintegration and flight.
CHAPTER XX
On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozháysk. At the
descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led out of the town
past the cathedral on the right, where a service was being held and the bells were
ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle and proceeded on foot. Behind him a
cavalry regiment was coming down the hill preceded by its singers. Coming up
toward him was a train of carts carrying men who had been wounded in the
engagement the day before. The peasant drivers, shouting and lashing their
horses, kept crossing from side to side. The carts, in each of which three or four
wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, jolted over the stones that had been
thrown on the steep incline to make it something like a road. The wounded,
bandaged with rags, with pale cheeks, compressed lips, and knitted brows, held
on to the sides of the carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost all of
them stared with naïve, childlike curiosity at Pierre’s white hat and green
swallow-tail coat.
Pierre’s coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep to one
side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the hill with its singers,
surrounded Pierre’s carriage and blocked the road. Pierre stopped, being pressed
against the side of the cutting in which the road ran. The sunshine from behind
the hill did not penetrate into the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but
above Pierre’s head was the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded
merrily. One of the carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road close to
Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it, placed a stone under one
of its tireless hind wheels, and began arranging the breech-band on his little
horse.
One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was following
the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand and turned to look at
Pierre.
“I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us on to
Moscow?” he asked.
Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question. He was
looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy of wounded, now
at the cart by which he was standing, in which two wounded men were sitting
and one was lying. One of those sitting up in the cart had probably been
wounded in the cheek. His whole head was wrapped in rags and one cheek was
swollen to the size of a baby’s head. His nose and mouth were twisted to one
side. This soldier was looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a
young lad, a fair-haired recruit as white as though there was no blood in his thin
face, looked at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third lay prone so that his
face was not visible. The cavalry singers were passing close by:
Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,
Living in a foreign land...
“Oh, ja,” said the other, “der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwächen, so kann
man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung nehmen.” *
* “Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of
course one cannot take into account the loss of private
individuals.”
in all 62 guns.
The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouché, will place
the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all, on the flanks of the battery
that is to bombard the entrenchment on the left, which will have forty guns in all
directed against it.
General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all the
howitzers of the Guard’s artillery against either one or other of the
entrenchments.
During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the wood on
the village and turn the enemy’s position.
General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first fortification.
After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given in
accordance with the enemy’s movements.
The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of the right
wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand’s division and of the vice-King’s
division will open a heavy fire on seeing the attack commence on the right wing.
The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three bridges,
advancing to the same heights as Morand’s and Gibrard’s divisions, which under
his leadership will be directed against the redoubt and come into line with the
rest of the forces.
All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et méthode) as
far as possible retaining troops in reserve.
The Imperial Camp near Mozháysk,
September, 6, 1812.
These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one allows oneself
to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his genius, related to
Napoleon’s orders to deal with four points—four different orders. Not one of
these was, or could be, carried out.
In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the spot chosen by
Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouché; which were to come in line with
them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and shower shells on the Russian flèches
and redoubts. This could not be done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon
the projectiles did not carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into
the air until the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon’s instructions, moved
them forward.
The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through the
wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done and was not
done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village through the wood, met
Túchkov there barring his way, and could not and did not turn the Russian
position.
The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to seize the
first fortification. General Campan’s division did not seize the first fortification
but was driven back, for on emerging from the wood it had to reform under
grapeshot, of which Napoleon was unaware.
The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village (Borodinó) and
cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand’s and
Gérard’s divisions (for whose movements no directions are given), which under
his leadership will be directed against the redoubt and come into line with the
rest of the forces.
As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible sentence as
from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders given him, he was to
advance from the left through Borodinó to the redoubt while the divisions of
Morand and Gérard were to advance simultaneously from the front.
All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could not be
executed. After passing through Borodinó the vice-King was driven back to the
Kolochá and could get no farther; while the divisions of Morand and Gérard did
not take the redoubt but were driven back, and the redoubt was only taken at the
end of the battle by the cavalry (a thing probably unforeseen and not heard of by
Napoleon). So not one of the orders in the disposition was, or could be,
executed. But in the disposition it is said that, after the fight has commenced in
this manner, orders will be given in accordance with the enemy’s movements, and
so it might be supposed that all necessary arrangements would be made by
Napoleon during the battle. But this was not and could not be done, for during
the whole battle Napoleon was so far away that, as appeared later, he could not
know the course of the battle and not one of his orders during the fight could be
executed.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of Borodinó
because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a cold the orders he
gave before and during the battle would have been still more full of genius and
Russia would have been lost and the face of the world have been changed. To
historians who believe that Russia was shaped by the will of one man—Peter the
Great—and that France from a republic became an empire and French armies
went to Russia at the will of one man—Napoleon—to say that Russia remained a
power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August may
seem logical and convincing.
If it had depended on Napoleon’s will to fight or not to fight the battle of
Borodinó, and if this or that other arrangement depended on his will, then
evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of his will might have saved Russia,
and consequently the valet who omitted to bring Napoleon his waterproof boots
on the twenty-fourth would have been the savior of Russia. Along that line of
thought such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction Voltaire
made in jest (without knowing what he was jesting at) when he saw that the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX’s stomach being deranged.
But to men who do not admit that Russia was formed by the will of one man,
Peter I, or that the French Empire was formed and the war with Russia begun by
the will of one man, Napoleon, that argument seems not merely untrue and
irrational, but contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes
historic events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of human
events is predetermined from on high—depends on the coincidence of the wills
of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon’s influence on the course
of these events is purely external and fictitious.
Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX’s will, though he gave the order for it
and thought it was done as a result of that order; and strange as it may seem to
suppose that the slaughter of eighty thousand men at Borodinó was not due to
Napoleon’s will, though he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle
and thought it was done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions
appear, yet human dignity—which tells me that each of us is, if not more at least
not less a man than the great Napoleon—demands the acceptance of that solution
of the question, and historic investigation abundantly confirms it.
At the battle of Borodinó Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one. That was
all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who killed people.
The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of Borodinó not
because of Napoleon’s orders but by their own volition. The whole army—
French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch—hungry, ragged, and weary of the
campaign, felt at the sight of an army blocking their road to Moscow that the
wine was drawn and must be drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight
the Russians, they would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the
Russians because it was inevitable.
When they heard Napoleon’s proclamation offering them, as compensation for
mutilation and death, the words of posterity about their having been in the battle
before Moscow, they cried “Vive l’Empereur!” just as they had cried “Vive
l’Empereur!” at the sight of the portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe
with a toy stick, and just as they would have cried “Vive l’Empereur!” at any
nonsense that might be told them. There was nothing left for them to do but cry
“Vive l’Empereur!” and go to fight, in order to get food and rest as conquerors in
Moscow. So it was not because of Napoleon’s commands that they killed their
fellow men.
And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none of his
orders were executed and during the battle he did not know what was going on
before him. So the way in which these people killed one another was not decided
by Napoleon’s will but occurred independently of him, in accord with the will of
hundreds of thousands of people who took part in the common action. It only
seemed to Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question
whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than the cold of
the least of the transport soldiers.
Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was the cause of
his dispositions not being as well-planned as on former occasions, and of his
orders during the battle not being as good as previously, is quite baseless, which
again shows that Napoleon’s cold on the twenty-sixth of August was
unimportant.
The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even better, than
previous dispositions by which he had won victories. His pseudo-orders during
the battle were also no worse than formerly, but much the same as usual. These
dispositions and orders only seem worse than previous ones because the battle of
Borodinó was the first Napoleon did not win. The profoundest and most
excellent dispositions and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist
criticizes them with looks of importance, when they relate to a battle that has
been lost, and the very worst dispositions and orders seem very good, and
serious people fill whole volumes to demonstrate their merits, when they relate
to a battle that has been won.
The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of Austerlitz were a
model of perfection for that kind of composition, but still they were criticized—
criticized for their very perfection, for their excessive minuteness.
Napoleon at the battle of Borodinó fulfilled his office as representative of
authority as well as, and even better than, at other battles. He did nothing
harmful to the progress of the battle; he inclined to the most reasonable opinions,
he made no confusion, did not contradict himself, did not get frightened or run
away from the field of battle, but with his great tact and military experience
carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.
CHAPTER XXIX
On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon remarked:
“The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!”
Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to him
about Paris and about some changes he meant to make in the Empress’
household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details relating to the
court.
He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset’s love of travel, and
chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon who knows his job does
when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron while a patient is being
strapped to the operating table. “The matter is in my hands and is clear and
definite in my head. When the time comes to set to work I shall do it as no one
else could, but now I can jest, and the more I jest and the calmer I am the more
tranquil and confident you ought to be, and the more amazed at my genius.”
Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest before the
serious business which, he considered, awaited him next day. He was so much
interested in that task that he was unable to sleep, and in spite of his cold which
had grown worse from the dampness of the evening, he went into the large
division of the tent at three o’clock in the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He
asked whether the Russians had not withdrawn, and was told that the enemy’s
fires were still in the same places. He nodded approval.
The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.
“Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?” Napoleon asked
him.
“Without doubt, sire,” replied Rapp.
Napoleon looked at him.
“Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at Smolénsk?”
continued Rapp. “The wine is drawn and must be drunk.”
Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head on his hand.
“This poor army!” he suddenly remarked. “It has diminished greatly since
Smolénsk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always said so and I am
beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the Guards are intact?” he
remarked interrogatively.
“Yes, sire,” replied Rapp.
Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his watch. He
was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was impossible to give
further orders for the sake of killing time, for the orders had all been given and
were now being executed.
“Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of the Guards?”
asked Napoleon sternly.
“Yes, sire.”
“The rice too?”
Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor’s order about the rice, but
Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing that his order had
been executed. An attendant came in with punch. Napoleon ordered another
glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently sipped his own.
“I have neither taste nor smell,” he remarked, sniffing at his glass. “This cold
is tiresome. They talk about medicine—what is the good of medicine when it
can’t cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these lozenges but they don’t help at all.
What can doctors cure? One can’t cure anything. Our body is a machine for
living. It is organized for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and
let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by encumbering it with
remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that should go for a certain time; the
watchmaker cannot open it, he can only adjust it by fumbling, and that
blindfold.... Yes, our body is just a machine for living, that is all.”
And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was fond, Napoleon
suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.
“Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?” asked he. “It is the art of being
stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That’s all.”
Rapp made no reply.
“Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutúzov!” said Napoleon. “We shall
see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three weeks and
did not once mount a horse to inspect his entrenchments.... We shall see!”
He looked at his watch. It was still only four o’clock. He did not feel sleepy.
The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do. He rose, walked to and
fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went out of the tent. The night was
dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible moisture was descending from above.
Near by, the campfires were dimly burning among the French Guards, and in the
distance those of the Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was
calm, and the rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to
take up their positions were clearly audible.
Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires and listened to
these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman in a shaggy cap, who was
standing sentinel before his tent and had drawn himself up like a black pillar at
sight of the Emperor, Napoleon stopped in front of him.
“What year did you enter the service?” he asked with that affectation of
military bluntness and geniality with which he always addressed the soldiers.
The man answered the question.
“Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?”
“It has, Your Majesty.”
Napoleon nodded and walked away.
The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to the dressing station by the wood,
where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of three tents with
flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch wood. In the wood, wagons and
horses were standing. The horses were eating oats from their movable troughs
and sparrows flew down and pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting
blood, flew among the birch trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over
more than five acres, bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay.
Around the wounded stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with dismal and
attentive faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in vain to drive from the
spot. Disregarding the officers’ orders, the soldiers stood leaning against their
stretchers and gazing intently, as if trying to comprehend the difficult problem of
what was taking place before them. From the tents came now loud angry cries
and now plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch water, or to
point out those who were to be brought in next. The wounded men awaiting their
turn outside the tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed, swore, or asked for
vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andrew’s bearers, stepping over the
wounded who had not yet been bandaged, took him, as a regimental commander,
close up to one of the tents and there stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince
Andrew opened his eyes and for a long time could not make out what was going
on around him. He remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the
whirling black ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. Two steps
from him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and attracting general
attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired noncommissioned officer with a
bandaged head. He had been wounded in the head and leg by bullets. Around
him, eagerly listening to his talk, a crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was
gathered.
“We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we grabbed the
King himself!” cried he, looking around him with eyes that glittered with fever.
“If only reserves had come up just then, lads, there wouldn’t have been nothing
left of him! I tell you surely....”
Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him with shining
eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. “But isn’t it all the same now?”
thought he. “And what will be there, and what has there been here? Why was I
so reluctant to part with life? There was something in this life I did not and do
not understand.”
CHAPTER XXXVII
One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron, holding a
cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his small bloodstained hands,
so as not to smear it. He raised his head and looked about him, but above the
level of the wounded men. He evidently wanted a little respite. After turning his
head from right to left for some time, he sighed and looked down.
“All right, immediately,” he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince Andrew
out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.
Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.
“It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have a chance!”
remarked one.
Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only just been
cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince Andrew could not make
out distinctly what was in that tent. The pitiful groans from all sides and the
torturing pain in his thigh, stomach, and back distracted him. All he saw about
him merged into a general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that
seemed to fill the whole of the low tent, as a few weeks previously, on that hot
August day, such bodies had filled the dirty pond beside the Smolénsk road. Yes,
it was the same flesh, the same chair à canon, the sight of which had even then
filled him with horror, as by a presentiment.
There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied, and on the
third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he was left alone and
involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on the other two tables. On the
nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a Cossack, judging by the uniform thrown
down beside him. Four soldiers were holding him, and a spectacled doctor was
cutting into his muscular brown back.
“Ooh, ooh, ooh!” grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his swarthy snub-
nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white teeth, he began to
wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing, ringing, and prolonged yells. On
the other table, round which many people were crowding, a tall well-fed man lay
on his back with his head thrown back. His curly hair, its color, and the shape of
his head seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were
pressing on his chest to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg twitched
rapidly all the time with a feverish tremor. The man was sobbing and choking
convulsively. Two doctors—one of whom was pale and trembling—were silently
doing something to this man’s other, gory leg. When he had finished with the
Tartar, whom they covered with an overcoat, the spectacled doctor came up to
Prince Andrew, wiping his hands.
He glanced at Prince Andrew’s face and quickly turned away.
“Undress him! What are you waiting for?” he cried angrily to the dressers.
His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to Prince
Andrew’s mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began hastily to undo the
buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The doctor bent down over the wound,
felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he made a sign to someone, and the torturing
pain in his abdomen caused Prince Andrew to lose consciousness. When he
came to himself the splintered portions of his thighbone had been extracted, the
torn flesh cut away, and the wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on his
face. As soon as Prince Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent over, kissed
him silently on the lips, and hurried away.
After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a blissful
feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All the best and happiest
moments of his life—especially his earliest childhood, when he used to be
undressed and put to bed, and when leaning over him his nurse sang him to sleep
and he, burying his head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of
life—returned to his memory, not merely as something past but as something
present.
The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of whose
head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him up and trying to
quiet him.
“Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!” his frightened moans could be
heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.
Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted to weep. Whether because he
was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to part with life, or because of
those memories of a childhood that could not return, or because he was suffering
and others were suffering and that man near him was groaning so piteously—he
felt like weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears.
The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted blood
and with the boot still on.
“Oh! Oh, ooh!” he sobbed, like a woman.
The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince Andrew
from seeing his face, moved away.
“My God! What is this? Why is he here?” said Prince Andrew to himself.
In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been amputated,
he recognized Anatole Kurágin. Men were supporting him in their arms and
offering him a glass of water, but his trembling, swollen lips could not grasp its
rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully. “Yes, it is he! Yes, that man is somehow
closely and painfully connected with me,” thought Prince Andrew, not yet
clearly grasping what he saw before him. “What is the connection of that man
with my childhood and life?” he asked himself without finding an answer. And
suddenly a new unexpected memory from that realm of pure and loving
childhood presented itself to him. He remembered Natásha as he had seen her for
the first time at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck and arms and with a
frightened happy face ready for rapture, and love and tenderness for her, stronger
and more vivid than ever, awoke in his soul. He now remembered the connection
that existed between himself and this man who was dimly gazing at him through
tears that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered everything, and ecstatic pity
and love for that man overflowed his happy heart.
Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender loving tears
for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and their errors.
“Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for those who
hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God preached on earth and
which Princess Mary taught me and I did not understand—that is what made me
sorry to part with life, that is what remained for me had I lived. But now it is too
late. I know it!”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and wounded,
together with the heaviness of his head and the news that some twenty generals
he knew personally had been killed or wounded, and the consciousness of the
impotence of his once mighty arm, produced an unexpected impression on
Napoleon who usually liked to look at the killed and wounded, thereby, he
considered, testing his strength of mind. This day the horrible appearance of the
battlefield overcame that strength of mind which he thought constituted his merit
and his greatness. He rode hurriedly from the battlefield and returned to the
Shevárdino knoll, where he sat on his campstool, his sallow face swollen and
heavy, his eyes dim, his nose red, and his voice hoarse, involuntarily listening,
with downcast eyes, to the sounds of firing. With painful dejection he awaited
the end of this action, in which he regarded himself as a participant and which he
was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling for a brief moment got the better
of the artificial phantasm of life he had served so long. He felt in his own person
the sufferings and death he had witnessed on the battlefield. The heaviness of his
head and chest reminded him of the possibility of suffering and death for
himself. At that moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory (what
need had he for any more glory?). The one thing he wished for was rest,
tranquillity, and freedom. But when he had been on the Semënovsk heights the
artillery commander had proposed to him to bring several batteries of artillery up
to those heights to strengthen the fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of
Knyazkóvo. Napoleon had assented and had given orders that news should be
brought to him of the effect those batteries produced.
An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns had
been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that they still held
their ground.
“Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on,” said the
adjutant.
“They want more!...” said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.
“Sire?” asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.
“They want more!” croaked Napoleon frowning. “Let them have it!”
Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and for which he
gave the order only because he thought it was expected of him, was being done.
And he fell back into that artificial realm of imaginary greatness, and again—as
a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing something for itself—he
submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for
him.
And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience darkened
of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening lay more than on
all the others who took part in it. Never to the end of his life could he understand
goodness, beauty, or truth, or the significance of his actions which were too
contrary to goodness and truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever
to be able to grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as
they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and all
humanity.
Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with men killed
and maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as he looked at them how
many Russians there were for each Frenchman and, deceiving himself, find
reason for rejoicing in the calculation that there were five Russians for every
Frenchman. Not on that day alone did he write in a letter to Paris that “the battle
field was superb,” because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the
island of St. Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said he intended to devote
his leisure to an account of the great deeds he had done, he wrote:
The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern times: it
was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the tranquillity and security of all;
it was purely pacific and conservative.
It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the beginning of
security. A new horizon and new labors were opening out, full of well-being and
prosperity for all. The European system was already founded; all that remained
was to organize it.
Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I too should
have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were stolen from me.
In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have discussed our interests like
one family, and have rendered account to the peoples as clerk to master.
Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people, and anyone
who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in the common
fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all navigable rivers for
everybody, that the seas should be common to all, and that the great standing
armies should be reduced henceforth to mere guards for the sovereigns.
On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong, magnificent,
peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have proclaimed her frontiers
immutable; all future wars purely defensive, all aggrandizement antinational. I
should have associated my son in the Empire; my dictatorship would have been
finished, and his constitutional reign would have begun.
Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the envy of the
nations!
My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company with
the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to leisurely visiting,
with our own horses and like a true country couple, every corner of the Empire,
receiving complaints, redressing wrongs, and scattering public buildings and
benefactions on all sides and everywhere.
Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of executioner of
the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his actions had been the peoples’
welfare and that he could control the fate of millions and by the employment of
power confer benefactions.
“Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula,” he wrote further of the
Russian war, “half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles, Bavarians,
Württembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and Neapolitans. The
Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third composed of Dutch, Belgians,
men from the borders of the Rhine, Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans,
Romans, inhabitants of the Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of
Hamburg, and so on: it included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who
spoke French. The Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty
thousand men; the Russian army in its retreat from Vílna to Moscow lost in the
various battles four times more men than the French army; the burning of
Moscow cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who died of cold and
want in the woods; finally, in its march from Moscow to the Oder the Russian
army also suffered from the severity of the season; so that by the time it reached
Vílna it numbered only fifty thousand, and at Kálisch less than eighteen
thousand.”
He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the horrors
that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the whole responsibility
for what happened, and his darkened mind found justification in the belief that
among the hundreds of thousands who perished there were fewer Frenchmen
than Hessians and Bavarians.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and various
uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davýdov family and to the
crown serfs—those fields and meadows where for hundreds of years the
peasants of Borodinó, Górki, Shevárdino, and Semënovsk had reaped their
harvests and pastured their cattle. At the dressing stations the grass and earth
were soaked with blood for a space of some three acres around. Crowds of men
of various arms, wounded and unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged
themselves back to Mozháysk from the one army and back to Valúevo from the
other. Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their officers.
Others held their ground and continued to fire.
Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter of bayonets
and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now spread a mist of damp and
smoke and a strange acid smell of saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered and
drops of rain began to fall on the dead and wounded, on the frightened,
exhausted, and hesitating men, as if to say: “Enough, men! Enough! Cease...
bethink yourselves! What are you doing?”
To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest, it began
equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to slaughter one
another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the question arose in every soul:
“For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?... You may go and kill whom
you please, but I don’t want to do so any more!” By evening this thought had
ripened in every soul. At any moment these men might have been seized with
horror at what they were doing and might have thrown up everything and run
away anywhere.
But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the horror of what they
were doing, though they would have been glad to leave off, some
incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to control them, and they still
brought up the charges, loaded, aimed, and applied the match, though only one
artilleryman survived out of every three, and though they stumbled and panted
with fatigue, perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls
flew just as swiftly and cruelly from both sides, crushing human bodies, and that
terrible work which was not done by the will of a man but at the will of Him
who governs men and worlds continued.
Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would have said
that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it would disappear; and
anyone looking at the rear of the French army would have said that the Russians
need only make one more slight effort and the French would be destroyed. But
neither the French nor the Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle
burned slowly out.
The Russians did not make that effort because they were not attacking the
French. At the beginning of the battle they stood blocking the way to Moscow
and they still did so at the end of the battle as at the beginning. But even had the
aim of the Russians been to drive the French from their positions, they could not
have made this last effort, for all the Russian troops had been broken up, there
was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in the battle, and though
still holding their positions they had lost ONE HALF of their army.
The French, with the memory of all their former victories during fifteen years,
with the assurance of Napoleon’s invincibility, with the consciousness that they
had captured part of the battlefield and had lost only a quarter of their men and
still had their Guards intact, twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that
effort. The French who had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from
its position ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians continued
to block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French had not been
attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain. But the French did not make
that effort. Some historians say that Napoleon need only have used his Old
Guards, who were intact, and the battle would have been won. To speak of what
would have happened had Napoleon sent his Guards is like talking of what
would happen if autumn became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give
his Guards, not because he did not want to, but because it could not be done. All
the generals, officers, and soldiers of the French army knew it could not be done,
because the flagging spirit of the troops would not permit it.
It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling of the
mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and soldiers of his
army whether they had taken part in the battle or not, after all their experience of
previous battles—when after one tenth of such efforts the enemy had fled—
experienced a similar feeling of terror before an enemy who, after losing HALF
his men, stood as threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The
moral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not that sort of victory
which is defined by the capture of pieces of material fastened to sticks, called
standards, and of the ground on which the troops had stood and were standing,
but a moral victory that convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his
opponent and of his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodinó.
The French invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught received
a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, any more than
the Russian army, weaker by one half, could help swerving. By impetus gained,
the French army was still able to roll forward to Moscow, but there, without
further effort on the part of the Russians, it had to perish, bleeding from the
mortal wound it had received at Borodinó. The direct consequence of the battle
of Borodinó was Napoleon’s senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the
old Smolénsk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred
thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at Borodinó for
the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit had been laid.
BOOK ELEVEN: 1812
CHAPTER I
Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human mind.
Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only when he
examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but at the same time, a
large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary division of continuous
motion into discontinuous elements. There is a well-known, so-called sophism of
the ancients consisting in this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise
he was following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the
tortoise. By the time Achilles has covered the distance that separated him from
the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of that distance ahead of him:
when Achilles has covered that tenth, the tortoise has covered another one
hundredth, and so on forever. This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble.
The absurd answer (that Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted
from this: that motion was arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements,
whereas the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous.
By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only approach a
solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we have admitted the
conception of the infinitely small, and the resulting geometrical progression with
a common ratio of one tenth, and have found the sum of this progression to
infinity, do we reach a solution of the problem.
A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing with the
infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more complex problems of
motion which used to appear insoluble.
This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when dealing
with problems of motion admits the conception of the infinitely small, and so
conforms to the chief condition of motion (absolute continuity) and thereby
corrects the inevitable error which the human mind cannot avoid when it deals
with separate elements of motion instead of examining continuous motion.
In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens. The
movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable arbitrary human
wills, is continuous.
To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history. But
to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all those human wills, man’s
mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected units. The first method of history is
to take an arbitrarily selected series of continuous events and examine it apart
from others, though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event
always flows uninterruptedly from another.
The second method is to consider the actions of some one man—a king or a
commander—as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills; whereas the
sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity of a single historic
personage.
Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth continually takes
smaller and smaller units for examination. But however small the units it takes,
we feel that to take any unit disconnected from others, or to assume a beginning
of any phenomenon, or to say that the will of many men is expressed by the
actions of any one historic personage, is in itself false.
It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any deductions drawn
from history. It is merely necessary to select some larger or smaller unit as the
subject of observation—as criticism has every right to do, seeing that whatever
unit history observes must always be arbitrarily selected.
Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the differential of
history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of
integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to
arrive at the laws of history.
The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe present an
extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave their customary
pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other, plunder and slaughter one
another, triumph and are plunged in despair, and for some years the whole course
of life is altered and presents an intensive movement which first increases and
then slackens. What was the cause of this movement, by what laws was it
governed? asks the mind of man.
The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings and doings
of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris, calling these sayings and
doings “the Revolution”; then they give a detailed biography of Napoleon and of
certain people favorable or hostile to him; tell of the influence some of these
people had on others, and say: that is why this movement took place and those
are its laws.
But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation, but plainly
says that this method of explanation is fallacious, because in it a weaker
phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger. The sum of human wills
produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and only the sum of those wills first
tolerated and then destroyed them.
“But every time there have been conquests there have been conquerors; every
time there has been a revolution in any state there have been great men,” says
history. And, indeed, human reason replies: every time conquerors appear there
have been wars, but this does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and
that it is possible to find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a single
man. Whenever I look at my watch and its hands point to ten, I hear the bells of
the neighboring church; but because the bells begin to ring when the hands of the
clock reach ten, I have no right to assume that the movement of the bells is
caused by the position of the hands of the watch.
Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and see the
valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to conclude that the
whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of the movement of the engine.
The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the oaks are
budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when the oak is budding.
But though I do not know what causes the cold winds to blow when the oak buds
unfold, I cannot agree with the peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the
cause of the cold wind, for the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the
buds. I see only a coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the
phenomena of life, and I see that however much and however carefully I observe
the hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the engine, and the oak, I
shall not discover the cause of the bells ringing, the engine moving, or of the
winds of spring. To that I must entirely change my point of view and study the
laws of the movement of steam, of the bells, and of the wind. History must do
the same. And attempts in this direction have already been made.
To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our
observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the
common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved. No one
can say in how far it is possible for man to advance in this way toward an
understanding of the laws of history; but it is evident that only along that path
does the possibility of discovering the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a
millionth part as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by
historians as has been devoted to describing the actions of various kings,
commanders, and ministers and propounding the historians’ own reflections
concerning these actions.
CHAPTER II
The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The Russian army
and people avoided a collision till Smolénsk was reached, and again from
Smolénsk to Borodinó. The French army pushed on to Moscow, its goal, its
impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, just as the velocity of a falling body
increases as it approaches the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles of
hunger-stricken, hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles separating it
from its goal. Every soldier in Napoleon’s army felt this and the invasion moved
on by its own momentum.
The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of hatred of the
enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army increased and consolidated. At
Borodinó a collision took place. Neither army was broken up, but the Russian
army retreated immediately after the collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after
colliding with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability
the ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on for some
distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its force.
The Russians retreated eighty miles—to beyond Moscow—and the French
reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks after that there
was not a single battle. The French did not move. As a bleeding, mortally
wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained inert in Moscow for five
weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh reason, fled back: they made a dash for
the Kalúga road, and (after a victory—for at Málo-Yaroslávets the field of
conflict again remained theirs) without undertaking a single serious battle, they
fled still more rapidly back to Smolénsk, beyond Smolénsk, beyond the
Berëzina, beyond Vílna, and farther still.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutúzov and the whole Russian
army were convinced that the battle of Borodinó was a victory. Kutúzov reported
so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare for a fresh conflict to finish the
enemy and did this not to deceive anyone, but because he knew that the enemy
was beaten, as everyone who had taken part in the battle knew it.
But all that evening and next day reports came in one after another of
unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a fresh battle proved
physically impossible.
It was impossible to give battle before information had been collected, the
wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition replenished, the slain reckoned
up, new officers appointed to replace those who had been killed, and before the
men had had food and sleep. And meanwhile, the very next morning after the
battle, the French army advanced of itself upon the Russians, carried forward by
the force of its own momentum now seemingly increased in inverse proportion
to the square of the distance from its aim. Kutúzov’s wish was to attack next day,
and the whole army desired to do so. But to make an attack the wish to do so is
not sufficient, there must also be a possibility of doing it, and that possibility did
not exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day’s march, and then in the same
way it was impossible not to retreat another and a third day’s march, and at last,
on the first of September when the army drew near Moscow—despite the
strength of the feeling that had arisen in all ranks—the force of circumstances
compelled it to retire beyond Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last,
day’s march, and abandoned Moscow to the enemy.
For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles are made
by generals—as anyone of us sitting over a map in his study may imagine how
he would have arranged things in this or that battle—the questions present
themselves: Why did Kutúzov during the retreat not do this or that? Why did he
not take up a position before reaching Filí? Why did he not retire at once by the
Kalúga road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think in
that way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always limit the
activities of any commander in chief. The activity of a commander in chief does
not at all resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at ease in
our studies examining some campaign on the map, with a certain number of
troops on this and that side in a certain known locality, and begin our plans from
some given moment. A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning
of any event—the position from which we always contemplate it. The
commander in chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so he
never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event that is occurring.
Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every
moment of this continuous, uninterrupted shaping of events the commander in
chief is in the midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies,
authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged
to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly conflict
with one another.
Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutúzov should have
moved his army to the Kalúga road long before reaching Filí, and that somebody
actually submitted such a proposal to him. But a commander in chief, especially
at a difficult moment, has always before him not one proposal but dozens
simultaneously. And all these proposals, based on strategics and tactics,
contradict each other.
A commander in chief’s business, it would seem, is simply to choose one of
these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and time do not wait. For
instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested to him to cross to the Kalúga road,
but just then an adjutant gallops up from Milorádovich asking whether he is to
engage the French or retire. An order must be given him at once, that instant.
And the order to retreat carries us past the turn to the Kalúga road. And after the
adjutant comes the commissary general asking where the stores are to be taken,
and the chief of the hospitals asks where the wounded are to go, and a courier
from Petersburg brings a letter from the sovereign which does not admit of the
possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander in chief’s rival, the man
who is undermining him (and there are always not merely one but several such),
presents a new project diametrically opposed to that of turning to the Kalúga
road, and the commander in chief himself needs sleep and refreshment to
maintain his energy and a respectable general who has been overlooked in the
distribution of rewards comes to complain, and the inhabitants of the district
pray to be defended, and an officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and
gives a report quite contrary to what was said by the officer previously sent; and
a spy, a prisoner, and a general who has been on reconnaissance, all describe the
position of the enemy’s army differently. People accustomed to misunderstand or
to forget these inevitable conditions of a commander in chief’s actions describe
to us, for instance, the position of the army at Filí and assume that the
commander in chief could, on the first of September, quite freely decide whether
to abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army less than four
miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had that question been
settled? At Drissa and at Smolénsk and most palpably of all on the twenty-fourth
of August at Shevárdino and on the twenty-sixth at Borodinó, and each day and
hour and minute of the retreat from Borodinó to Filí.
CHAPTER III
When Ermólov, having been sent by Kutúzov to inspect the position, told the
field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before Moscow and that they
must retreat, Kutúzov looked at him in silence.
“Give me your hand,” said he and, turning it over so as to feel the pulse,
added: “You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you are saying!”
Kutúzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond Moscow
without a battle.
On the Poklónny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomílov gate of Moscow,
Kutúzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the roadside. A great
crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count Rostopchín, who had come
out from Moscow, joined them. This brilliant company separated into several
groups who all discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the position, the
state of the army, the plans suggested, the situation of Moscow, and military
questions generally. Though they had not been summoned for the purpose, and
though it was not so called, they all felt that this was really a council of war. The
conversations all dealt with public questions. If anyone gave or asked for
personal news, it was done in a whisper and they immediately reverted to
general matters. No jokes, or laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all these
men. They evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the height the
situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking among themselves, tried
to keep near the commander in chief (whose bench formed the center of the
gathering) and to speak so that he might overhear them. The commander in chief
listened to what was being said and sometimes asked them to repeat their
remarks, but did not himself take part in the conversations or express any
opinion. After hearing what was being said by one or other of these groups he
generally turned away with an air of disappointment, as though they were not
speaking of anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the position that had
been chosen, criticizing not the position itself so much as the mental capacity of
those who had chosen it. Others argued that a mistake had been made earlier and
that a battle should have been fought two days before. Others again spoke of the
battle of Salamanca, which was described by Crosart, a newly arrived
Frenchman in a Spanish uniform. (This Frenchman and one of the German
princes serving with the Russian army were discussing the siege of Saragossa
and considering the possibility of defending Moscow in a similar manner.) Count
Rostopchín was telling a fourth group that he was prepared to die with the city
train bands under the walls of the capital, but that he still could not help
regretting having been left in ignorance of what was happening, and that had he
known it sooner things would have been different.... A fifth group, displaying the
profundity of their strategic perceptions, discussed the direction the troops would
now have to take. A sixth group was talking absolute nonsense. Kutúzov’s
expression grew more and more preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he
saw only one thing: that to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the
full meaning of those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any
senseless commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would result but the
battle would still not take place. It would not take place because the commanders
not merely all recognized the position to be impossible, but in their
conversations were only discussing what would happen after its inevitable
abandonment. How could the commanders lead their troops to a field of battle
they considered impossible to hold? The lower-grade officers and even the
soldiers (who too reason) also considered the position impossible and therefore
could not go to fight, fully convinced as they were of defeat. If Bennigsen
insisted on the position being defended and others still discussed it, the question
was no longer important in itself but only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue.
This Kutúzov knew well.
Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian
patriotism (Kutúzov could not listen to this without wincing) by insisting that
Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as daylight to Kutúzov: if the
defense failed, to throw the blame on Kutúzov who had brought the army as far
as the Sparrow Hills without giving battle; if it succeeded, to claim the success
as his own; or if battle were not given, to clear himself of the crime of
abandoning Moscow. But this intrigue did not now occupy the old man’s mind.
One terrible question absorbed him and to that question he heard no reply from
anyone. The question for him now was: “Have I really allowed Napoleon to
reach Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it decided? Can it have been
yesterday when I ordered Plátov to retreat, or was it the evening before, when I
had a nap and told Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it earlier still?... When,
when was this terrible affair decided? Moscow must be abandoned. The army
must retreat and the order to do so must be given.” To give that terrible order
seemed to him equivalent to resigning the command of the army. And not only
did he love power to which he was accustomed (the honours awarded to Prince
Prozoróvski, under whom he had served in Turkey, galled him), but he was
convinced that he was destined to save Russia and that that was why, against the
Emperor’s wish and by the will of the people, he had been chosen commander in
chief. He was convinced that he alone could maintain command of the army in
these difficult circumstances, and that in all the world he alone could encounter
the invincible Napoleon without fear, and he was horrified at the thought of the
order he had to issue. But something had to be decided, and these conversations
around him which were assuming too free a character must be stopped.
He called the most important generals to him.
“My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself,” said he, rising from the
bench, and he rode to Filí where his carriages were waiting.
CHAPTER IV
The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in the better
and roomier part of Andrew Savostyánov’s hut. The men, women, and children
of the large peasant family crowded into the back room across the passage. Only
Malásha, Andrew’s six-year-old granddaughter whom his Serene Highness had
petted and to whom he had given a lump of sugar while drinking his tea,
remained on the top of the brick oven in the larger room. Malásha looked down
from the oven with shy delight at the faces, uniforms, and decorations of the
generals, who one after another came into the room and sat down on the broad
benches in the corner under the icons. “Granddad” himself, as Malásha in her
own mind called Kutúzov, sat apart in a dark corner behind the oven. He sat,
sunk deep in a folding armchair, and continually cleared his throat and pulled at
the collar of his coat which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to pinch his
neck. Those who entered went up one by one to the field marshal; he pressed the
hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant Kaysárov was about to draw
back the curtain of the window facing Kutúzov, but the latter moved his hand
angrily and Kaysárov understood that his Serene Highness did not wish his face
to be seen.
Round the peasant’s deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils, and papers,
so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in another bench and put it
beside the table. Ermólov, Kaysárov, and Toll, who had just arrived, sat down on
this bench. In the foremost place, immediately under the icons, sat Barclay de
Tolly, his high forehead merging into his bald crown. He had a St. George’s
Cross round his neck and looked pale and ill. He had been feverish for two days
and was now shivering and in pain. Beside him sat Uvárov, who with rapid
gesticulations was giving him some information, speaking in low tones as they
all did. Chubby little Dokhtúrov was listening attentively with eyebrows raised
and arms folded on his stomach. On the other side sat Count Ostermann-Tolstóy,
seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts. His broad head with its bold features
and glittering eyes was resting on his hand. Raévski, twitching forward the black
hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now at Kutúzov and now at the
door with a look of impatience. Konovnítsyn’s firm, handsome, and kindly face
was lit up by a tender, sly smile. His glance met Malásha’s, and the expression of
his eyes caused the little girl to smile.
They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of inspecting the
position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited for him from four till six
o’clock and did not begin their deliberations all that time but talked in low tones
of other matters.
Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutúzov leave his corner and
draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that had been placed
there to light up his face.
Bennigsen opened the council with the question: “Are we to abandon Russia’s
ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to defend it?” A
prolonged and general silence followed. There was a frown on every face and
only Kutúzov’s angry grunts and occasional cough broke the silence. All eyes
were gazing at him. Malásha too looked at “Granddad.” She was nearest to him
and saw how his face puckered; he seemed about to cry, but this did not last
long.
“Russia’s ancient and sacred capital!” he suddenly said, repeating
Bennigsen’s words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to the false
note in them. “Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that that question has no
meaning for a Russian.” (He lurched his heavy body forward.) “Such a question
cannot be put; it is senseless! The question I have asked these gentlemen to meet
to discuss is a military one. The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to
give up Moscow without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the army
as well as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your opinion,” and he
sank back in his chair.
The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game lost.
Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle at Filí was
impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the love of Moscow, he
proposed to move troops from the right to the left flank during the night and
attack the French right flank the following day. Opinions were divided, and
arguments were advanced for and against that project. Ermólov, Dokhtúrov, and
Raévski agreed with Bennigsen. Whether feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice
before abandoning the capital or guided by other, personal considerations, these
generals seemed not to understand that this council could not alter the inevitable
course of events and that Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other
generals, however, understood it and, leaving aside the question of Moscow,
spoke of the direction the army should take in its retreat. Malásha, who kept her
eyes fixed on what was going on before her, understood the meaning of the
council differently. It seemed to her that it was only a personal struggle between
“Granddad” and “Long-coat” as she termed Bennigsen. She saw that they grew
spiteful when they spoke to one another, and in her heart she sided with
“Granddad.” In the midst of the conversation she noticed “Granddad” give
Bennigsen a quick, subtle glance, and then to her joys she saw that “Granddad”
said something to “Long-coat” which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened
and paced angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutúzov’s
calm and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen’s
proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to attack the
French right wing.
“Gentlemen,” said Kutúzov, “I cannot approve of the count’s plan. Moving
troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous, and military history
supports that view. For instance...” Kutúzov seemed to reflect, searching for an
example, then with a clear, naïve look at Bennigsen he added: “Oh yes; take the
battle of Friedland, which I think the count well remembers, and which was...
not fully successful, only because our troops were rearranged too near the
enemy....”
There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them all.
The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and they all felt
that there was no more to be said.
During one of these pauses Kutúzov heaved a deep sigh as if preparing to
speak. They all looked at him.
“Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the broken
crockery,” said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table. “Gentlemen, I have
heard your views. Some of you will not agree with me. But I,” he paused, “by
the authority entrusted to me by my Sovereign and country, order a retreat.”
After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and circumspect
silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral.
Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different from the way
they had spoken during the council, communicated something to their
commander in chief.
Malásha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully
backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its projections,
and slipping between the legs of the generals she darted out of the room.
When he had dismissed the generals Kutúzov sat a long time with his elbows
on the table, thinking always of the same terrible question: “When, when did the
abandonment of Moscow become inevitable? When was that done which settled
the matter? And who was to blame for it?”
“I did not expect this,” said he to his adjutant Schneider when the latter came
in late that night. “I did not expect this! I did not think this would happen.”
“You should take some rest, your Serene Highness,” replied Schneider.
“But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!” exclaimed Kutúzov
without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist. “They shall too, if
only...”
CHAPTER V
At that very time, in circumstances even more important than retreating
without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of Moscow, Rostopchín,
who is usually represented as being the instigator of that event, acted in an
altogether different manner from Kutúzov.
After the battle of Borodinó the abandonment and burning of Moscow was as
inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without fighting.
Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the feeling
implanted in each of us and in our fathers.
The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the towns and
villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolénsk, without the participation of
Count Rostopchín and his broadsheets. The people awaited the enemy
unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited or tear anyone to pieces, but faced
its fate, feeling within it the strength to find what it should do at that most
difficult moment. And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went
away abandoning their property, while the poorer remained and burned and
destroyed what was left.
The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was and is
present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of this, and a
foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in Russian Moscow
society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already in July and at the
beginning of August showed that they expected this. Those who went away,
taking what they could and abandoning their houses and half their belongings,
did so from the latent patriotism which expresses itself not by phrases or by
giving one’s children to save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but
unobtrusively, simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces
the most powerful results.
“It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running away
from Moscow,” they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchín impressed on
them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed to be called
cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing it had to be done. Why
did they go? It is impossible to suppose that Rostopchín had scared them by his
accounts of horrors Napoleon had committed in conquered countries. The first
people to go away were the rich educated people who knew quite well that
Vienna and Berlin had remained intact and that during Napoleon’s occupation
the inhabitants had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the charming
Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian ladies, then liked so
much.
They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to
whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It was out of
the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst thing that could
happen. They went away even before the battle of Borodinó and still more
rapidly after it, despite Rostopchín’s calls to defend Moscow or the
announcement of his intention to take the wonder-working icon of the Iberian
Mother of God and go to fight, or of the balloons that were to destroy the
French, and despite all the nonsense Rostopchín wrote in his broadsheets. They
knew that it was for the army to fight, and that if it could not succeed it would
not do to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter of Moscow
to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they were to abandon
their property to destruction. They went away without thinking of the
tremendous significance of that immense and wealthy city being given over to
destruction, for a great city with wooden buildings was certain when abandoned
by its inhabitants to be burned. They went away each on his own account, and
yet it was only in consequence of their going away that the momentous event
was accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian
people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchín’s orders,
had already in June moved with her Negroes and her women jesters from
Moscow to her Sarátov estate, with a vague consciousness that she was not
Bonaparte’s servant, was really, simply, and truly carrying out the great work
which saved Russia. But Count Rostopchín, who now taunted those who left
Moscow and now had the government offices removed; now distributed quite
useless weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the
icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics of saints;
now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one hundred and thirty-six of
them removed the balloon that was being constructed by Leppich; now hinted
that he would burn Moscow and related how he had set fire to his own house;
now wrote a proclamation to the French solemnly upbraiding them for having
destroyed his Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having hinted that he would
burn Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch all
spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so; now
expelled all the French residents from Moscow, and now allowed Madame
Aubert-Chalmé (the center of the whole French colony in Moscow) to remain,
but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharëv to be arrested and exiled
for no particular offense; now assembled the people at the Three Hills to fight
the French and now, to get rid of them, handed over to them a man to be killed
and himself drove away by a back gate; now declared that he would not survive
the fall of Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his share
in the affair—this man did not understand the meaning of what was happening
but merely wanted to do something himself that would astonish people, to
perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a child he made sport of the
momentous, and unavoidable event—the abandonment and burning of Moscow
—and tried with his puny hand now to speed and now to stay the enormous,
popular tide that bore him along with it.
CHAPTER VI
Hélène, having returned with the court from Vílna to Petersburg, found herself
in a difficult position.
In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee who
occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vílna she had formed an
intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she returned to Petersburg both the
magnate and the prince were there, and both claimed their rights. Hélène was
faced by a new problem—how to preserve her intimacy with both without
offending either.
What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman did
not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezúkhova, who evidently
deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had she attempted
concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her awkward position by cunning,
she would have spoiled her case by acknowledging herself guilty. But Hélène,
like a really great man who can do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her
own position to be correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone
else was to blame.
The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach her, she lifted
her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said firmly: “That’s just like a man—
selfish and cruel! I expected nothing else. A woman sacrifices herself for you,
she suffers, and this is her reward! What right have you, monseigneur, to demand
an account of my attachments and friendships? He is a man who has been more
than a father to me!” The prince was about to say something, but Hélène
interrupted him.
“Well, yes,” said she, “it may be that he has other sentiments for me than
those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut my door on him. I am not
a man, that I should repay kindness with ingratitude! Know, monseigneur, that in
all that relates to my intimate feelings I render account only to God and to my
conscience,” she concluded, laying her hand on her beautiful, fully expanded
bosom and looking up to heaven.
“But for heaven’s sake listen to me!”
“Marry me, and I will be your slave!”
“But that’s impossible.”
“You won’t deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you...” said Hélène,
beginning to cry.
The prince tried to comfort her, but Hélène, as if quite distraught, said through
her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying, that there were
precedents (there were up to that time very few, but she mentioned Napoleon and
some other exalted personages), that she had never been her husband’s wife, and
that she had been sacrificed.
“But the law, religion...” said the prince, already yielding.
“The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can’t arrange
that?” said Hélène.
The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred to him, and
he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the Society of Jesus, with whom he
was on intimate terms.
A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Hélène gave at her
country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur de Jobert, a man no
longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant black eyes, a Jesuit à robe
courte * was presented to her, and in the garden by the light of the illuminations
and to the sound of music talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of
Christ, of the Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true Catholic religion
affords in this world and the next. Hélène was touched, and more than once tears
rose to her eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert and their voices trembled. A
dance, for which her partner came to seek her, put an end to her discourse with
her future directeur de conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert
came to see Hélène when she was alone, and after that often came again.
* Lay member of the Society of Jesus.
One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she knelt
down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting, middle-aged
Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself afterward described it,
she felt something like a fresh breeze wafted into her soul. It was explained to
her that this was la grâce.
After that a long-frocked abbé was brought to her. She confessed to him, and
he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box containing the
Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to partake of. A few days later
Hélène learned with pleasure that she had now been admitted to the true Catholic
Church and that in a few days the Pope himself would hear of her and would
send her a certain document.
All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the attention devoted
to her by so many clever men and expressed in such pleasant, refined ways, and
the state of dove-like purity she was now in (she wore only white dresses and
white ribbons all that time) gave her pleasure, but her pleasure did not cause her
for a moment to forget her aim. And as it always happens in contests of cunning
that a stupid person gets the better of cleverer ones, Hélène—having realized
that the main object of all these words and all this trouble was, after converting
her to Catholicism, to obtain money from her for Jesuit institutions (as to which
she received indications)—before parting with her money insisted that the
various operations necessary to free her from her husband should be performed.
In her view the aim of every religion was merely to preserve certain proprieties
while affording satisfaction to human desires. And with this aim, in one of her
talks with her Father Confessor, she insisted on an answer to the question, in
how far was she bound by her marriage?
They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room. The scent
of flowers came in at the window. Hélène was wearing a white dress, transparent
over her shoulders and bosom. The abbé, a well-fed man with a plump, clean-
shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth, and white hands meekly folded on his knees,
sat close to Hélène and, with a subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look of
delight at her beauty, occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his
opinion on the subject. Hélène with an uneasy smile looked at his curly hair and
his plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every moment expected the
conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbé, though he evidently enjoyed the
beauty of his companion, was absorbed in his mastery of the matter.
The course of the Father Confessor’s arguments ran as follows: “Ignorant of
the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow of conjugal fidelity to
a man who on his part, by entering the married state without faith in the religious
significance of marriage, committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked the
dual significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this your vow was binding.
You swerved from it. What did you commit by so acting? A venial, or a mortal,
sin? A venial sin, for you acted without evil intention. If now you married again
with the object of bearing children, your sin might be forgiven. But the question
is again a twofold one: firstly...”
But suddenly Hélène, who was getting bored, said with one of her bewitching
smiles: “But I think that having espoused the true religion I cannot be bound by
what a false religion laid upon me.”
The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case presented to
him thus with the simplicity of Columbus’ egg. He was delighted at the
unexpected rapidity of his pupil’s progress, but could not abandon the edifice of
argument he had laboriously constructed.
“Let us understand one another, Countess,” said he with a smile, and began
refuting his spiritual daughter’s arguments.
CHAPTER VII
Hélène understood that the question was very simple and easy from the
ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making difficulties only
because they were apprehensive as to how the matter would be regarded by the
secular authorities.
So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of society. She
provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him what she had told her
other suitor; that is, she put the matter so that the only way for him to obtain a
right over her was to marry her. The elderly magnate was at first as much taken
aback by this suggestion of marriage with a woman whose husband was alive, as
the younger man had been, but Hélène’s imperturbable conviction that it was as
simple and natural as marrying a maiden had its effect on him too. Had Hélène
herself shown the least sign of hesitation, shame, or secrecy, her cause would
certainly have been lost; but not only did she show no signs of secrecy or shame,
on the contrary, with good-natured naïveté she told her intimate friends (and
these were all Petersburg) that both the prince and the magnate had proposed to
her and that she loved both and was afraid of grieving either.
A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Hélène wanted to be
divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would have opposed
so illegal an intention) but simply that the unfortunate and interesting Hélène
was in doubt which of the two men she should marry. The question was no
longer whether this was possible, but only which was the better match and how
the matter would be regarded at court. There were, it is true, some rigid
individuals unable to rise to the height of such a question, who saw in the project
a desecration of the sacrament of marriage, but there were not many such and
they remained silent, while the majority were interested in Hélène’s good fortune
and in the question which match would be the more advantageous. Whether it
was right or wrong to remarry while one had a husband living they did not
discuss, for that question had evidently been settled by people “wiser than you or
me,” as they said, and to doubt the correctness of that decision would be to risk
exposing one’s stupidity and incapacity to live in society.
Only Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, who had come to Petersburg that
summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express an opinion
contrary to the general one. Meeting Hélène at a ball she stopped her in the
middle of the room and, amid general silence, said in her gruff voice: “So wives
of living men have started marrying again! Perhaps you think you have invented
a novelty? You have been forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is
done in all the brothels,” and with these words Márya Dmítrievna, turning up her
wide sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly round,
moved across the room.
Though people were afraid of Márya Dmítrievna she was regarded in
Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only noticed, and
repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had used, supposing the whole
sting of her remark to lie in that word.
Prince Vasíli, who of late very often forgot what he had said and repeated one
and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his daughter whenever he
chanced to see her:
“Hélène, I have a word to say to you,” and he would lead her aside, drawing
her hand downward. “I have heard of certain projects concerning... you know.
Well my dear child, you know how your father’s heart rejoices to know that
you... You have suffered so much.... But, my dear child, consult only your own
heart. That is all I have to say,” and concealing his unvarying emotion he would
press his cheek against his daughter’s and move away.
Bilíbin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever man, and
who was one of the disinterested friends so brilliant a woman as Hélène always
has—men friends who can never change into lovers—once gave her his view of
the matter at a small and intimate gathering.
“Listen, Bilíbin,” said Hélène (she always called friends of that sort by their
surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her white, beringed fingers.
“Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought to do. Which of the two?”
Bilíbin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with a smile on
his lips.
“You are not taking me unawares, you know,” said he. “As a true friend, I
have thought and thought again about your affair. You see, if you marry the
prince”—he meant the younger man—and he crooked one finger, “you forever
lose the chance of marrying the other, and you will displease the court besides.
(You know there is some kind of connection.) But if you marry the old count you
will make his last days happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no
longer be making a mésalliance by marrying you,” and Bilíbin smoothed out his
forehead.
“That’s a true friend!” said Hélène beaming, and again touching Bilíbin’s
sleeve. “But I love them, you know, and don’t want to distress either of them. I
would give my life for the happiness of them both.”
Bilíbin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he could help
in that difficulty.
“Une maîtresse-femme! * That’s what is called putting things squarely. She
would like to be married to all three at the same time,” thought he.
* A masterly woman.
“But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?” Bilíbin asked, his
reputation being so well established that he did not fear to ask so naïve a
question. “Will he agree?”
“Oh, he loves me so!” said Hélène, who for some reason imagined that Pierre
too loved her. “He will do anything for me.”
Bilíbin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.
“Even divorce you?” said he.
Hélène laughed.
Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed
marriage was Hélène’s mother, Princess Kurágina. She was continually
tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned a
subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the idea. She
consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of divorce and remarriage during
a husband’s lifetime, and the priest told her that it was impossible, and to her
delight showed her a text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly
forbids remarriage while the husband is alive.
Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable, she drove
to her daughter’s early one morning so as to find her alone.
Having listened to her mother’s objections, Hélène smiled blandly and
ironically.
“But it says plainly: ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced...’” said the
old princess.
“Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de bêtises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma
position j’ai des devoirs,” * said Hélène changing from Russian, in which
language she always felt that her case did not sound quite clear, into French
which suited it better.
* “Oh, Mamma, don’t talk nonsense! You don’t understand
anything. In my position I have obligations.”
“But, my dear....”
“Oh, Mamma, how is it you don’t understand that the Holy Father, who has
the right to grant dispensations...”
Just then the lady companion who lived with Hélène came in to announce that
His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.
“Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre lui, parce
qu’il m’a manqué parole.” *
* “No, tell him I don’t wish to see him, I am furious with
him for not keeping his word to me.”
The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who had
entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter and sidled out
of the room.
“Yes, she is right,” thought the old princess, all her convictions dissipated by
the appearance of His Highness. “She is right, but how is it that we in our
irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so simple,” she thought as she got
into her carriage.
By the beginning of August Hélène’s affairs were clearly defined and she
wrote a letter to her husband—who, as she imagined, loved her very much—
informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her having embraced the
one true faith, and asking him to carry out all the formalities necessary for a
divorce, which would be explained to him by the bearer of the letter.
And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful keeping
—Your friend Hélène.
This letter was brought to Pierre’s house when he was on the field of
Borodinó.
CHAPTER VIII
Toward the end of the battle of Borodinó, Pierre, having run down from
Raévski’s battery a second time, made his way through a gully to Knyazkóvo
with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station, and seeing blood and
hearing cries and groans hurried on, still entangled in the crowds of soldiers.
The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away quickly
from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that day and return to
ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a room in his own bed. He felt
that only in the ordinary conditions of life would he be able to understand
himself and all he had seen and felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were
nowhere to be found.
Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along which he was
going, still on all sides there was what there had been on the field of battle.
There were still the same suffering, exhausted, and sometimes strangely
indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldiers’ overcoats, the same sounds
of firing which, though distant now, still aroused terror, and besides this there
were the foul air and the dust.
Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozháysk road, Pierre sat down by
the roadside.
Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay leaning on his
elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved past him in the
darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon ball was flying toward
him with a terrific whizz, and then he shuddered and sat up. He had no idea how
long he had been there. In the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought
some firewood, settled down near him and began lighting a fire.
The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire to burn and
placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some dried bread and put a little
dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy viands mingled with the smell of smoke.
Pierre sat up and sighed. The three soldiers were eating and talking among
themselves, taking no notice of him.
“And who may you be?” one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently
meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: “If you want to eat we’ll give
you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest man.”
“I, I...” said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social position as
much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and better understood by
them. “By rights I am a militia officer, but my men are not here. I came to the
battle and have lost them.”
“There now!” said one of the soldiers.
Another shook his head.
“Would you like a little mash?” the first soldier asked, and handed Pierre a
wooden spoon after licking it clean.
Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they called the food
in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than any food he had ever
tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it, helping himself to large spoonfuls and
chewing one after another, his face was lit up by the fire and the soldiers looked
at him in silence.
“Where have you to go to? Tell us!” said one of them.
“To Mozháysk.”
“You’re a gentleman, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And what’s your name?”
“Peter Kirílych.”
“Well then, Peter Kirílych, come along with us, we’ll take you there.”
In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozháysk.
By the time they got near Mozháysk and began ascending the steep hill into
the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on with the soldiers, quite
forgetting that his inn was at the bottom of the hill and that he had already
passed it. He would not soon have remembered this, such was his state of
forgetfulness, had he not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had
been to look for him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom
recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat.
“Your excellency!” he said. “Why, we were beginning to despair! How is it
you are on foot? And where are you going, please?”
“Oh, yes!” said Pierre.
The soldiers stopped.
“So you’ve found your folk?” said one of them. “Well, good-by, Peter
Kirílych—isn’t it?”
“Good-by, Peter Kirílych!” Pierre heard the other voices repeat.
“Good-by!” he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.
“I ought to give them something!” he thought, and felt in his pocket. “No,
better not!” said another, inner voice.
There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied. Pierre went
out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all, lay down in his carriage.
CHAPTER IX
Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt himself falling
asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness of reality, he heard the boom,
boom, boom of firing, the thud of projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled
blood and powder, and a feeling of horror and dread of death seized him. Filled
with fright he opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak. All was
tranquil in the yard. Only someone’s orderly passed through the gateway,
splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper. Above Pierre’s head
some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in sitting up, fluttered
under the dark roof of the penthouse. The whole courtyard was permeated by a
strong peaceful smell of stable yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He
could see the clear starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.
“Thank God, there is no more of that!” he thought, covering up his head
again. “Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I yielded to it! But
they... they were steady and calm all the time, to the end...” thought he.
They, in Pierre’s mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the battery,
those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before the icon. They,
those strange men he had not previously known, stood out clearly and sharply
from everyone else.
“To be a soldier, just a soldier!” thought Pierre as he fell asleep, “to enter
communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them what they are. But
how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden of my outer man? There was a
time when I could have done it. I could have run away from my father, as I
wanted to. Or I might have been sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with
Dólokhov.” And the memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had
challenged Dólokhov flashed through Pierre’s mind, and then he remembered his
benefactor at Torzhók. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the lodge
presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English Club and someone
near and dear to him sat at the end of the table. “Yes, that is he! It is my
benefactor. But he died!” thought Pierre. “Yes, he died, and I did not know he
was alive. How sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive
again!” On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dólokhov, Nesvítski, Denísov, and
others like them (in his dream the category to which these men belonged was as
clearly defined in his mind as the category of those he termed they), and he heard
those people, Anatole and Dólokhov, shouting and singing loudly; yet through
their shouting the voice of his benefactor was heard speaking all the time and the
sound of his words was as weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the
battlefield, but pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his
benefactor was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite
distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the possibility of being
what they were. And they with their simple, kind, firm faces surrounded his
benefactor on all sides. But though they were kindly they did not look at Pierre
and did not know him. Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got up,
but at that moment his legs grew cold and bare.
He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his cloak had
in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his cloak Pierre opened his
eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs, posts, and yard, but now they were all
bluish, lit up, and glittering with frost or dew.
“It is dawn,” thought Pierre. “But that’s not what I want. I want to hear and
understand my benefactor’s words.” Again he covered himself up with his cloak,
but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was there. There were only thoughts
clearly expressed in words, thoughts that someone was uttering or that he
himself was formulating.
Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that
someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of that day
had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to think and express
his thoughts like that when awake.
“To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man’s freedom to the law
of God,” the voice had said. “Simplicity is submission to the will of God; you
cannot escape from Him. And they are simple. They do not talk, but act. The
spoken word is silver but the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing
while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no
suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. The
hardest thing (Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his dream) is to be able in
your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all?” he asked himself. “No, not to
unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts together is
what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!” he repeated to
himself with inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed
what he wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him.
“Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness.”
“Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your excellency!” some
voice was repeating. “We must harness, it is time to harness....”
It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone straight into
Pierre’s face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the middle of which soldiers
were watering their lean horses at the pump while carts were passing out of the
gate. Pierre turned away with repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back
on the carriage seat. “No, I don’t want that, I don’t want to see and understand
that. I want to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream. One
second more and I should have understood it all! But what am I to do? Harness,
but how can I harness everything?” and Pierre felt with horror that the meaning
of all he had seen and thought in the dream had been destroyed.
The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an officer had
come with news that the French were already near Mozháysk and that our men
were leaving it.
Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him, went on foot
through the town.
The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind
them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses, and the
streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts that were to take
some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and blows could be heard. Pierre
offered the use of his carriage, which had overtaken him, to a wounded general
he knew, and drove with him to Moscow. On the way Pierre was told of the
death of his brother-in-law Anatole and of that of Prince Andrew.
CHAPTER X
On the thirtieth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the gates of the
city he was met by Count Rostopchín’s adjutant.
“We have been looking for you everywhere,” said the adjutant. “The count
wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at once on a very
important matter.”
Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow
commander in chief.
Count Rostopchín had only that morning returned to town from his summer
villa at Sokólniki. The anteroom and reception room of his house were full of
officials who had been summoned or had come for orders. Vasílchikov and
Plátov had already seen the count and explained to him that it was impossible to
defend Moscow and that it would have to be surrendered. Though this news was
being concealed from the inhabitants, the officials—the heads of the various
government departments—knew that Moscow would soon be in the enemy’s
hands, just as Count Rostopchín himself knew it, and to escape personal
responsibility they had all come to the governor to ask how they were to deal
with their various departments.
As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army came out
of Rostopchín’s private room.
In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a
despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room.
While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched the
various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who were there. They all
seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to a group of men, one of whom
he knew. After greeting Pierre they continued their conversation.
“If they’re sent out and brought back again later on it will do no harm, but as
things are now one can’t answer for anything.”
“But you see what he writes...” said another, pointing to a printed sheet he
held in his hand.
“That’s another matter. That’s necessary for the people,” said the first.
“What is it?” asked Pierre.
“Oh, it’s a fresh broadsheet.”
Pierre took it and began reading.
His Serene Highness has passed through Mozháysk in order to join up with
the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong position where the
enemy will not soon attack him. Forty-eight guns with ammunition have been
sent him from here, and his Serene Highness says he will defend Moscow to the
last drop of blood and is even ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset,
brothers, that the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order, and we
will deal with villains in our own way! When the time comes I shall want both
town and peasant lads and will raise the cry a day or two beforehand, but they
are not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will be useful, a hunting spear not
bad, but a three-pronged fork will be best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than
a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother
of God to the wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will have some water
blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I, too, am well now: one of my
eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout with both.
“But military men have told me that it is impossible to fight in the town,” said
Pierre, “and that the position...”
“Well, of course! That’s what we were saying,” replied the first speaker.
“And what does he mean by ‘One of my eyes was sore but now I am on the
lookout with both’?” asked Pierre.
“The count had a sty,” replied the adjutant smiling, “and was very much upset
when I told him people had come to ask what was the matter with him. By the
by, Count,” he added suddenly, addressing Pierre with a smile, “we heard that
you have family troubles and that the countess, your wife...”
“I have heard nothing,” Pierre replied unconcernedly. “But what have you
heard?”
“Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I heard.”
“But what did you hear?”
“Well, they say,” continued the adjutant with the same smile, “that the
countess, your wife, is preparing to go abroad. I expect it’s nonsense....”
“Possibly,” remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-mindedly. “And who is
that?” he asked, indicating a short old man in a clean blue peasant overcoat, with
a big snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy face.
“He? That’s a tradesman, that is to say, he’s the restaurant keeper,
Vereshchágin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the proclamation.”
“Oh, so that is Vereshchágin!” said Pierre, looking at the firm, calm face of
the old man and seeking any indication of his being a traitor.
“That’s not he himself, that’s the father of the fellow who wrote the
proclamation,” said the adjutant. “The young man is in prison and I expect it will
go hard with him.”
An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German wearing a
cross round his neck, approached the speaker.
“It’s a complicated story, you know,” said the adjutant. “That proclamation
appeared about two months ago. The count was informed of it. He gave orders to
investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivánovich here made the inquiries. The
proclamation had passed through exactly sixty-three hands. He asked one, ‘From
whom did you get it?’ ‘From so-and-so.’ He went to the next one. ‘From whom
did you get it?’ and so on till he reached Vereshchágin, a half educated
tradesman, you know, ‘a pet of a trader,’” said the adjutant smiling. “They asked
him, ‘Who gave it you?’ And the point is that we knew whom he had it from. He
could only have had it from the Postmaster. But evidently they had come to
some understanding. He replied: ‘From no one; I made it up myself.’ They
threatened and questioned him, but he stuck to that: ‘I made it up myself.’ And
so it was reported to the count, who sent for the man. ‘From whom did you get
the proclamation?’ ‘I wrote it myself.’ Well, you know the count,” said the
adjutant cheerfully, with a smile of pride, “he flared up dreadfully—and just
think of the fellow’s audacity, lying, and obstinacy!”
“And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharëv? I understand!”
said Pierre.
“Not at all,” rejoined the adjutant in dismay. “Klyucharëv had his own sins to
answer for without that and that is why he has been banished. But the point is
that the count was much annoyed. ‘How could you have written it yourself?’ said
he, and he took up the Hamburg Gazette that was lying on the table. ‘Here it is!
You did not write it yourself but translated it, and translated it abominably,
because you don’t even know French, you fool.’ And what do you think? ‘No,’
said he, ‘I have not read any papers, I made it up myself.’ ‘If that’s so, you’re a
traitor and I’ll have you tried, and you’ll be hanged! Say from whom you had it.’
‘I have seen no papers, I made it up myself.’ And that was the end of it. The
count had the father fetched, but the fellow stuck to it. He was sent for trial and
condemned to hard labor, I believe. Now the father has come to intercede for
him. But he’s a good-for-nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman’s son, a
dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures somewhere and imagines that
the devil is no match for him. That’s the sort of fellow he is. His father keeps a
cookshop here by the Stone Bridge, and you know there was a large icon of God
Almighty painted with a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other. Well, he
took that icon home with him for a few days and what did he do? He found some
scoundrel of a painter...”
CHAPTER XI
In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the commander in
chief.
When he entered the private room Count Rostopchín, puckering his face, was
rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was saying something,
but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went out.
“Ah, how do you do, great warrior?” said Rostopchín as soon as the short man
had left the room. “We have heard of your prowess. But that’s not the point.
Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to the Masons?” he went on
severely, as though there were something wrong about it which he nevertheless
intended to pardon. Pierre remained silent. “I am well informed, my friend, but I
am aware that there are Masons and I hope that you are not one of those who on
pretense of saving mankind wish to ruin Russia.”
“Yes, I am a Mason,” Pierre replied.
“There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs. Speránski and
Magnítski have been deported to their proper place. Mr. Klyucharëv has been
treated in the same way, and so have others who on the plea of building up the
temple of Solomon have tried to destroy the temple of their fatherland. You can
understand that there are reasons for this and that I could not have exiled the
Postmaster had he not been a harmful person. It has now come to my knowledge
that you lent him your carriage for his removal from town, and that you have
even accepted papers from him for safe custody. I like you and don’t wish you
any harm and—as you are only half my age—I advise you, as a father would, to
cease all communication with men of that stamp and to leave here as soon as
possible.”
“But what did Klyucharëv do wrong, Count?” asked Pierre.
“That is for me to know, but not for you to ask,” shouted Rostopchín.
“If he is accused of circulating Napoleon’s proclamation it is not proved that
he did so,” said Pierre without looking at Rostopchín, “and Vereshchágin...”
“There we are!” Rostopchín shouted at Pierre louder than before, frowning
suddenly. “Vereshchágin is a renegade and a traitor who will be punished as he
deserves,” said he with the vindictive heat with which people speak when
recalling an insult. “But I did not summon you to discuss my actions, but to give
you advice—or an order if you prefer it. I beg you to leave the town and break
off all communication with such men as Klyucharëv. And I will knock the
nonsense out of anybody”—but probably realizing that he was shouting at
Bezúkhov who so far was not guilty of anything, he added, taking Pierre’s hand
in a friendly manner, “We are on the eve of a public disaster and I haven’t time
to be polite to everybody who has business with me. My head is sometimes in a
whirl. Well, mon cher, what are you doing personally?”
“Why, nothing,” answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing the
thoughtful expression of his face.
The count frowned.
“A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can, that’s all I
have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-by, my dear fellow. Oh,
by the by!” he shouted through the doorway after Pierre, “is it true that the
countess has fallen into the clutches of the holy fathers of the Society of Jesus?”
Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchín’s room more sullen and angry than
he had ever before shown himself.
When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight people had
come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee, the colonel of his
battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various petitioners. They all had
business with Pierre and wanted decisions from him. Pierre did not understand
and was not interested in any of these questions and only answered them in order
to get rid of these people. When left alone at last he opened and read his wife’s
letter.
“They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old man...
Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary... the meaning of all...
one must harness... my wife is getting married... One must forget and
understand...” And going to his bed he threw himself on it without undressing
and immediately fell asleep.
When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that a
special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count Rostopchín to know
whether Count Bezúkhov had left or was leaving the town.
A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in the
drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to see them, went
to the back porch and out through the gate.
From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of Bezúkhov’s
household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre again or knew where he
was.
CHAPTER XII
The Rostóvs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is, till the
eve of the enemy’s entry into the city.
After Pétya had joined Obolénski’s regiment of Cossacks and left for Bélaya
Tsérkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was seized with terror.
The thought that both her sons were at the war, had both gone from under her
wing, that today or tomorrow either or both of them might be killed like the three
sons of one of her acquaintances, struck her that summer for the first time with
cruel clearness. She tried to get Nicholas back and wished to go herself to join
Pétya, or to get him an appointment somewhere in Petersburg, but neither of
these proved possible. Pétya could not return unless his regiment did so or unless
he was transferred to another regiment on active service. Nicholas was
somewhere with the army and had not sent a word since his last letter, in which
he had given a detailed account of his meeting with Princess Mary. The countess
did not sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep dreamed that she saw her sons
lying dead. After many consultations and conversations, the count at last devised
means to tranquillize her. He got Pétya transferred from Obolénski’s regiment to
Bezúkhov’s, which was in training near Moscow. Though Pétya would remain in
the service, this transfer would give the countess the consolation of seeing at
least one of her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her
Pétya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to places where
he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as Nicholas alone was in
danger the countess imagined that she loved her first-born more than all her
other children and even reproached herself for it; but when her youngest: the
scapegrace who had been bad at lessons, was always breaking things in the
house and making himself a nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Pétya with
his merry black eyes and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning
to show—when he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were
fighting somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure in it—then
his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all her other children.
The nearer the time came for Pétya to return, the more uneasy grew the countess.
She began to think she would never live to see such happiness. The presence of
Sónya, of her beloved Natásha, or even of her husband irritated her. “What do I
want with them? I want no one but Pétya,” she thought.
At the end of August the Rostóvs received another letter from Nicholas. He
wrote from the province of Vorónezh where he had been sent to procure
remounts, but that letter did not set the countess at ease. Knowing that one son
was out of danger she became the more anxious about Pétya.
Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostóvs’ acquaintances had
left Moscow, and though everybody tried to persuade the countess to get away as
quickly as possible, she would not hear of leaving before her treasure, her adored
Pétya, returned. On the twenty-eighth of August he arrived. The passionate
tenderness with which his mother received him did not please the sixteen-year-
old officer. Though she concealed from him her intention of keeping him under
her wing, Pétya guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing that he might give
way to emotion when with her—might “become womanish” as he termed it to
himself—he treated her coldly, avoided her, and during his stay in Moscow
attached himself exclusively to Natásha for whom he had always had a
particularly brotherly tenderness, almost lover-like.
Owing to the count’s customary carelessness nothing was ready for their
departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were to come from
their Ryazán and Moscow estates to remove their household belongings did not
arrive till the thirtieth.
From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a bustle and
commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodinó were brought in
by the Dorogomílov gate and taken to various parts of Moscow, and thousands
of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their possessions out by the other gates. In
spite of Rostopchín’s broadsheets, or because of them or independently of them,
the strangest and most contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some said
that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on the contrary said that
all the icons had been taken out of the churches and everybody was to be ordered
to leave. Some said there had been another battle after Borodinó at which the
French had been routed, while others on the contrary reported that the Russian
army had been destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia which,
preceded by the clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others whispered that
Augustin had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had been seized, that the
peasants were rioting and robbing people on their way from Moscow, and so on.
But all this was only talk; in reality (though the Council of Filí, at which it was
decided to abandon Moscow, had not yet been held) both those who went away
and those who remained behind felt, though they did not show it, that Moscow
would certainly be abandoned, and that they ought to get away as quickly as
possible and save their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly
break up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so. As a
criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die immediately, but
yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is awry on his head, so Moscow
involuntarily continued its wonted life, though it knew that the time of its
destruction was near when the conditions of life to which its people were
accustomed to submit would be completely upset.
During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole Rostóv
family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the family, Count Ilyá
Rostóv, continually drove about the city collecting the current rumors from all
sides and gave superficial and hasty orders at home about the preparations for
their departure.
The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied with
everything, was constantly in pursuit of Pétya who was always running away
from her, and was jealous of Natásha with whom he spent all his time. Sónya
alone directed the practical side of matters by getting things packed. But of late
Sónya had been particularly sad and silent. Nicholas’ letter in which he
mentioned Princess Mary had elicited, in her presence, joyous comments from
the countess, who saw an intervention of Providence in this meeting of the
princess and Nicholas.
“I was never pleased at Bolkónski’s engagement to Natásha,” said the
countess, “but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had a
presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!”
Sónya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of retrieving the Rostóvs’
affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman, and that the princess was a good
match. It was very bitter for her. But despite her grief, or perhaps just because of
it, she took on herself all the difficult work of directing the storing and packing
of their things and was busy for whole days. The count and countess turned to
her when they had any orders to give. Pétya and Natásha on the contrary, far
from helping their parents, were generally a nuisance and a hindrance to
everyone. Almost all day long the house resounded with their running feet, their
cries, and their spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were gay not because
there was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and mirth were in their hearts
and so everything that happened was a cause for gaiety and laughter to them.
Pétya was in high spirits because having left home a boy he had returned (as
everybody told him) a fine young man, because he was at home, because he had
left Bélaya Tsérkov where there was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and
had come to Moscow where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly
because Natásha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natásha
was gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her of the
cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was also happy
because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of others was a lubricant
the wheels of her machine needed to make them run freely—and Pétya adored
her. Above all, they were gay because there was a war near Moscow, there would
be fighting at the town gates, arms were being given out, everybody was
escaping—going away somewhere, and in general something extraordinary was
happening, and that is always exciting, especially to the young.
CHAPTER XIII
On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the Rostóvs’ house
seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the furniture was being carried
out or moved about, and the mirrors and pictures had been taken down. There
were trunks in the rooms, and hay, wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered
about. The peasants and house serfs carrying out the things were treading
heavily on the parquet floors. The yard was crowded with peasant carts, some
loaded high and already corded up, others still empty.
The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants who had
come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another in the yard and in
the house. The count had been out since morning. The countess had a headache
brought on by all the noise and turmoil and was lying down in the new sitting
room with a vinegar compress on her head. Pétya was not at home, he had gone
to visit a friend with whom he meant to obtain a transfer from the militia to the
active army. Sónya was in the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass
and china. Natásha was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room with dresses,
ribbons, and scarves strewn all about her, gazing fixedly at the floor and holding
in her hands the old ball dress (already out of fashion) which she had worn at her
first Petersburg ball.
Natásha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy, and
several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart was not in it,
and she could not and did not know how to do anything except with all her heart
and all her might. For a while she had stood beside Sónya while the china was
being packed and tried to help, but soon gave it up and went to her room to pack
her own things. At first she found it amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to
the maids, but when that was done and what was left had still to be packed, she
found it dull.
“Dunyásha, you pack! You will, won’t you, dear?” And when Dunyásha
willingly promised to do it all for her, Natásha sat down on the floor, took her
old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite unrelated to what ought to have
occupied her thoughts now. She was roused from her reverie by the talk of the
maids in the next room (which was theirs) and by the sound of their hurried
footsteps going to the back porch. Natásha got up and looked out of the window.
An enormously long row of carts full of wounded men had stopped in the street.
The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen,
postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded.
Natásha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and holding an
end of it in each hand, went out into the street.
The former housekeeper, old Mávra Kuzmínichna, had stepped out of the
crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of bast mats, and
was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside. Natásha moved a few steps
forward and stopped shyly, still holding her handkerchief, and listened to what
the housekeeper was saying.
“Then you have nobody in Moscow?” she was saying. “You would be more
comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the family are
leaving.”
“I don’t know if it would be allowed,” replied the officer in a weak voice.
“Here is our commanding officer... ask him,” and he pointed to a stout major
who was walking back along the street past the row of carts.
Natásha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded officer and at
once went to meet the major.
“May the wounded men stay in our house?” she asked.
The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.
“Which one do you want, Ma’am’selle?” said he, screwing up his eyes and
smiling.
Natásha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole manner were so
serious, though she was still holding the ends of her handkerchief, that the major
ceased smiling and after some reflection—as if considering in how far the thing
was possible—replied in the affirmative.
“Oh yes, why not? They may,” he said.
With a slight inclination of her head, Natásha stepped back quickly to Mávra
Kuzmínichna, who stood talking compassionately to the officer.
“They may. He says they may!” whispered Natásha.
The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostóvs’ yard, and dozens
of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the townsfolk to turn into
the yards and to draw up at the entrances of the houses in Povarskáya Street.
Natásha was evidently pleased to be dealing with new people outside the
ordinary routine of her life. She and Mávra Kuzmínichna tried to get as many of
the wounded as possible into their yard.
“Your Papa must be told, though,” said Mávra Kuzmínichna.
“Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can move into
the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house.”
“There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if we put
them into the wing, the men’s room, or the nurse’s room, we must ask
permission.”
“Well, I’ll ask.”
Natásha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the half-open door into
the sitting room, where there was a smell of vinegar and Hoffman’s drops.
“Are you asleep, Mamma?”
“Oh, what sleep—?” said the countess, waking up just as she was dropping
into a doze.
“Mamma darling!” said Natásha, kneeling by her mother and bringing her
face close to her mother’s, “I am sorry, forgive me, I’ll never do it again; I woke
you up! Mávra Kuzmínichna has sent me: they have brought some wounded here
—officers. Will you let them come? They have nowhere to go. I knew you’d let
them come!” she said quickly all in one breath.
“What officers? Whom have they brought? I don’t understand anything about
it,” said the countess.
Natásha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.
“I knew you’d give permission... so I’ll tell them,” and, having kissed her
mother, Natásha got up and went to the door.
In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news.
“We’ve stayed too long!” said the count with involuntary vexation. “The Club
is closed and the police are leaving.”
“Papa, is it all right—I’ve invited some of the wounded into the house?” said
Natásha.
“Of course it is,” he answered absently. “That’s not the point. I beg you not to
indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and tomorrow we must go, go, go!...”
And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the servants.
At dinner Pétya having returned home told them the news he had heard. He
said the people had been getting arms in the Krémlin, and that though
Rostopchín’s broadsheet had said that he would sound a call two or three days in
advance, the order had certainly already been given for everyone to go armed to
the Three Hills tomorrow, and that there would be a big battle there.
The countess looked with timid horror at her son’s eager, excited face as he
said this. She realized that if she said a word about his not going to the battle
(she knew he enjoyed the thought of the impending engagement) he would say
something about men, honor, and the fatherland—something senseless,
masculine, and obstinate which there would be no contradicting, and her plans
would be spoiled; and so, hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Pétya
with her as their protector and defender, she did not answer him, but after dinner
called the count aside and implored him with tears to take her away quickly, that
very night if possible. With a woman’s involuntary loving cunning she, who till
then had not shown any alarm, said that she would die of fright if they did not
leave that very night. Without any pretense she was now afraid of everything.
CHAPTER XIV
Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the
countess’ fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit dealer’s in
Myasnítski Street. When returning by that street she had been unable to pass
because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the shop. She had taken a cab and
driven home by a side street and the cabman had told her that the people were
breaking open the barrels at the drink store, having received orders to do so.
After dinner the whole Rostóv household set to work with enthusiastic haste
packing their belongings and preparing for their departure. The old count,
suddenly setting to work, kept passing from the yard to the house and back
again, shouting confused instructions to the hurrying people, and flurrying them
still more. Pétya directed things in the yard. Sónya, owing to the count’s
contradictory orders, lost her head and did not know what to do. The servants ran
noisily about the house and yard, shouting and disputing. Natásha, with the ardor
characteristic of all she did suddenly set to work too. At first her intervention in
the business of packing was received skeptically. Everybody expected some
prank from her and did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely and passionately
demanded obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because they did not heed her,
and at last succeeded in making them believe her. Her first exploit, which cost
her immense effort and established her authority, was the packing of the carpets.
The count had valuable Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house.
When Natásha set to work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one
almost full up with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much china
standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from the storeroom. A
third case was needed and servants had gone to fetch it.
“Sónya, wait a bit—we’ll pack everything into these,” said Natásha.
“You can’t, Miss, we have tried to,” said the butler’s assistant.
“No, wait a minute, please.”
And Natásha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates wrapped in
paper.
“The dishes must go in here among the carpets,” said she.
“Why, it’s a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three cases,” said the
butler’s assistant.
“Oh, wait, please!” And Natásha began rapidly and deftly sorting out the
things. “These aren’t needed,” said she, putting aside some plates of Kiev ware.
“These—yes, these must go among the carpets,” she said, referring to the
Saxony china dishes.
“Don’t, Natásha! Leave it alone! We’ll get it all packed,” urged Sónya
reproachfully.
“What a young lady she is!” remarked the major-domo.
But Natásha would not give in. She turned everything out and began quickly
repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and unnecessary crockery
should not be taken at all. When everything had been taken out of the cases, they
recommenced packing, and it turned out that when the cheaper things not worth
taking had nearly all been rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the
two cases. Only the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down.
A few more things might have been taken out, but Natásha insisted on having
her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler’s assistant and
Pétya—whom she had drawn into the business of packing—press on the lid, and
made desperate efforts herself.
“That’s enough, Natásha,” said Sónya. “I see you were right, but just take out
the top one.”
“I won’t!” cried Natásha, with one hand holding back the hair that hung over
her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down the carpets. “Now
press, Pétya! Press, Vasílich, press hard!” she cried.
The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natásha, clapping her hands, screamed
with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only lasted a moment. She at
once set to work afresh and they now trusted her completely. The count was not
angry even when they told him that Natásha had countermanded an order of his,
and the servants now came to her to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded,
and whether it might be corded up. Thanks to Natásha’s directions the work now
went on expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most valuable
packed as compactly as possible.
But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could not get
everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the count, having put off
their departure till next morning, went to bed.
Sónya and Natásha slept in the sitting room without undressing.
That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskáya, and Mávra
Kuzmínichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought into the Rostóvs’
yard. Mávra Kuzmínichna concluded that he was a very important man. He was
being conveyed in a calèche with a raised hood, and was quite covered by an
apron. On the box beside the driver sat a venerable old attendant. A doctor and
two soldiers followed the carriage in a cart.
“Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house will
be empty,” said the old woman to the old attendant.
“Well, perhaps,” said he with a sigh. “We don’t expect to get him home alive!
We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it’s a long way from here, and
there’s nobody living in it.”
“Do us the honor to come in, there’s plenty of everything in the master’s
house. Come in,” said Mávra Kuzmínichna. “Is he very ill?” she asked.
The attendant made a hopeless gesture.
“We don’t expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor.”
And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.
“All right!” said the doctor.
The old servant returned to the calèche, looked into it, shook his head
disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and stopped beside Mávra
Kuzmínichna.
“O, Lord Jesus Christ!” she murmured.
She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.
“The masters won’t object...” she said.
But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took him into the
wing and put him in the room that had been Madame Schoss’.
This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkónski.
CHAPTER XV
Moscow’s last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a Sunday. The
church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just as usual on Sundays.
Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the city.
Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow—the rabble, that is
the poor people, and the price of commodities. An enormous crowd of factory
hands, house serfs, and peasants, with whom some officials, seminarists, and
gentry were mingled, had gone early that morning to the Three Hills. Having
waited there for Rostopchín who did not turn up, they became convinced that
Moscow would be surrendered, and then dispersed all about the town to the
public houses and cookshops. Prices too that day indicated the state of affairs.
The price of weapons, of gold, of carts and horses, kept rising, but the value of
paper money and city articles kept falling, so that by midday there were
instances of carters removing valuable goods, such as cloth, and receiving in
payment a half of what they carted, while peasant horses were fetching five
hundred rubles each, and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being given away
for nothing.
In the Rostóvs’ staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of former conditions
of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs the only indication was that three
out of their huge retinue disappeared during the night, but nothing was stolen;
and as to the value of their possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come in
from their estates and which many people envied proved to be extremely
valuable and they were offered enormous sums of money for them. Not only
were huge sums offered for the horses and carts, but on the previous evening and
early in the morning of the first of September, orderlies and servants sent by
wounded officers came to the Rostóvs’ and wounded men dragged themselves
there from the Rostóvs’ and from neighboring houses where they were
accommodated, entreating the servants to try to get them a lift out of Moscow.
The major-domo to whom these entreaties were addressed, though he was sorry
for the wounded, resolutely refused, saying that he dare not even mention the
matter to the count. Pity these wounded men as one might, it was evident that if
they were given one cart there would be no reason to refuse another, or all the
carts and one’s own carriages as well. Thirty carts could not save all the
wounded and in the general catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and
one’s own family. So thought the major-domo on his master’s behalf.
On waking up that morning Count Ilyá Rostóv left his bedroom softly, so as
not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward morning, and came
out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In the yard stood the carts ready
corded. The carriages were at the front porch. The major-domo stood at the
porch talking to an elderly orderly and to a pale young officer with a bandaged
arm. On seeing the count the major-domo made a significant and stern gesture to
them both to go away.
“Well, Vasílich, is everything ready?” asked the count, and stroking his bald
head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the orderly and nodded to them.
(He liked to see new faces.)
“We can harness at once, your excellency.”
“Well, that’s right. As soon as the countess wakes we’ll be off, God willing!
What is it, gentlemen?” he added, turning to the officer. “Are you staying in my
house?”
The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed crimson.
“Count, be so good as to allow me... for God’s sake, to get into some corner of
one of your carts! I have nothing here with me.... I shall be all right on a loaded
cart....”
Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made the same request on
behalf of his master.
“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” said the count hastily. “I shall be very pleased, very
pleased. Vasílich, you’ll see to it. Just unload one or two carts. Well, what of it...
do what’s necessary...” said the count, muttering some indefinite order.
But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the officer’s face
had already sealed the order. The count looked around him. In the yard, at the
gates, at the window of the wings, wounded officers and their orderlies were to
be seen. They were all looking at the count and moving toward the porch.
“Please step into the gallery, your excellency,” said the major-domo. “What
are your orders about the pictures?”
The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to refuse the
wounded who asked for a lift.
“Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded,” he added in a soft,
confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard.
At nine o’clock the countess woke up, and Matrëna Timoféevna, who had
been her lady’s maid before her marriage and now performed a sort of chief
gendarme’s duty for her, came to say that Madame Schoss was much offended
and the young ladies’ summer dresses could not be left behind. On inquiry, the
countess learned that Madame Schoss was offended because her trunk had been
taken down from its cart, and all the loads were being uncorded and the luggage
taken out of the carts to make room for wounded men whom the count in the
simplicity of his heart had ordered that they should take with them. The countess
sent for her husband.
“What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded.”
“You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer came to me
to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are things that can be
bought but think what being left behind means to them!... Really now, in our
own yard—we asked them in ourselves and there are officers among them....
You know, I think, my dear... let them be taken... where’s the hurry?”
The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money matters. The
countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of news of something
detrimental to the children’s interests, such as the building of a new gallery or
conservatory, the inauguration of a private theater or an orchestra. She was
accustomed always to oppose anything announced in that timid tone and
considered it her duty to do so.
She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband:
“Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are getting nothing
for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our—all the children’s
property! You said yourself that we have a hundred thousand rubles’ worth of
things in the house. I don’t consent, my dear, I don’t! Do as you please! It’s the
government’s business to look after the wounded; they know that. Look at the
Lopukhíns opposite, they cleared out everything two days ago. That’s what other
people do. It’s only we who are such fools. If you have no pity on me, have some
for the children.”
Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without replying.
“Papa, what are you doing that for?” asked Natásha, who had followed him
into her mother’s room.
“Nothing! What business is it of yours?” muttered the count angrily.
“But I heard,” said Natásha. “Why does Mamma object?”
“What business is it of yours?” cried the count.
Natásha stepped up to the window and pondered.
“Papa! Here’s Berg coming to see us,” said she, looking out of the window.
CHAPTER XVI
Berg, the Rostóvs’ son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the orders of
Vladímir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and agreeable post of assistant to
the head of the staff of the assistant commander of the first division of the
Second Army.
On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army.
He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone in the army
was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something to do there. So he
considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence for family and domestic
reasons.
Berg drove up to his father-in-law’s house in his spruce little trap with a pair
of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He looked attentively at the
carts in the yard and while going up to the porch took out a clean pocket
handkerchief and tied a knot in it.
From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into the
drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of Natásha and
Sónya, and hastened to inquire after “Mamma’s” health.
“Health, at a time like this?” said the count. “Come, tell us the news! Is the
army retreating or will there be another battle?”
“God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa,” said Berg.
“The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the leaders, so to say, have
now assembled in council. No one knows what is coming. But in general I can
tell you, Papa, that such a heroic spirit, the truly antique valor of the Russian
army, which they—which it” (he corrected himself) “has shown or displayed in
the battle of the twenty-sixth—there are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell
you, Papa” (he smote himself on the breast as a general he had heard speaking
had done, but Berg did it a trifle late for he should have struck his breast at the
words “Russian army”), “I tell you frankly that we, the commanders, far from
having to urge the men on or anything of that kind, could hardly restrain those...
those... yes, those exploits of antique valor,” he went on rapidly. “General
Barclay de Tolly risked his life everywhere at the head of the troops, I can assure
you. Our corps was stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!”
And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he had heard
those days. Natásha watched him with an intent gaze that confused him, as if she
were trying to find in his face the answer to some question.
“Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors cannot be
imagined or adequately praised!” said Berg, glancing round at Natásha, and as if
anxious to conciliate her, replying to her intent look with a smile. “‘Russia is not
in Moscow, she lives in the hearts of her sons!’ Isn’t it so, Papa?” said he.
Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary and
dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her hand, asked about
her health, and, swaying his head from side to side to express sympathy,
remained standing beside her.
“Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad times for every
Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still time to get away....”
“I can’t think what the servants are about,” said the countess, turning to her
husband. “I have just been told that nothing is ready yet. Somebody after all
must see to things. One misses Mítenka at such times. There won’t be any end to
it.”
The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained himself. He
got up from his chair and went to the door.
At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose and,
seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and significantly.
“And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa,” said he.
“Hm...” said the count, and stopped.
“I was driving past Yusúpov’s house just now,” said Berg with a laugh, “when
the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I wouldn’t buy
something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and there is a small chiffonier
and a dressing table. You know how dear Véra wanted a chiffonier like that and
how we had a dispute about it.” (At the mention of the chiffonier and dressing
table Berg involuntarily changed his tone to one of pleasure at his admirable
domestic arrangements.) “And it’s such a beauty! It pulls out and has a secret
English drawer, you know! And dear Véra has long wanted one. I wish to give
her a surprise, you see. I saw so many of those peasant carts in your yard. Please
let me have one, I will pay the man well, and...”
The count frowned and coughed.
“Ask the countess, I don’t give orders.”
“If it’s inconvenient, please don’t,” said Berg. “Only I so wanted it, for dear
Véra’s sake.”
“Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the devil...” cried the
old count. “My head’s in a whirl!”
And he left the room. The countess began to cry.
“Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!” said Berg.
Natásha left the room with her father and, as if finding it difficult to reach
some decision, first followed him and then ran downstairs.
Pétya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the servants who
were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still standing in the yard. Two of
them had been uncorded and a wounded officer was climbing into one of them
helped by an orderly.
“Do you know what it’s about?” Pétya asked Natásha.
She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling about. She
did not answer.
“It’s because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the wounded,” said Pétya.
“Vasílich told me. I consider...”
“I consider,” Natásha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry face to
Pétya, “I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I don’t know what. Are we
despicable Germans?”
Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening and letting
the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed headlong up the stairs.
Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the respectful
attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was pacing up and down the
room, when Natásha, her face distorted by anger, burst in like a tempest and
approached her mother with rapid steps.
“It’s horrid! It’s abominable!” she screamed. “You can’t possibly have ordered
it!”
Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The count
stood still at the window and listened.
“Mamma, it’s impossible: see what is going on in the yard!” she cried. “They
will be left!...”
“What’s the matter with you? Who are ‘they’? What do you want?”
“Why, the wounded! It’s impossible, Mamma. It’s monstrous!... No, Mamma
darling, it’s not the thing. Please forgive me, darling.... Mamma, what does it
matter what we take away? Only look what is going on in the yard... Mamma!...
It’s impossible!”
The count stood by the window and listened without turning round. Suddenly
he sniffed and put his face closer to the window.
The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for her
mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did not turn to look
at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.
“Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?” she said, not surrendering at
once.
“Mamma, darling, forgive me!”
But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her husband.
“My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don’t understand about it,”
said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.
“The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen,” muttered the count through tears
of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide her look of shame on his
breast.
“Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?...” asked Natásha. “We will still take
all the most necessary things.”
The count nodded affirmatively, and Natásha, at the rapid pace at which she
used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to the anteroom and
downstairs into the yard.
The servants gathered round Natásha, but could not believe the strange order
she brought them until the count himself, in his wife’s name, confirmed the order
to give up all the carts to the wounded and take the trunks to the storerooms.
When they understood that order the servants set to work at this new task with
pleasure and zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it
seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour before it
had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should be left behind and the
goods carted away but that had seemed the only thing to do.
The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner, set eagerly
to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the carts. The wounded
dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood with pale but happy faces
round the carts. The news that carts were to be had spread to the neighboring
houses, from which wounded men began to come into the Rostóvs’ yard. Many
of the wounded asked them not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the
top of the things. But the work of unloading, once started, could not be arrested.
It seemed not to matter whether all or only half the things were left behind.
Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures, and mirrors that had been so carefully
packed the night before now lay about the yard, and still they went on searching
for and finding possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded
have another and yet another cart.
“We can take four more men,” said the steward. “They can have my trap, or
else what is to become of them?”
“Let them have my wardrobe cart,” said the countess. “Dunyásha can go with
me in the carriage.”
They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from a
house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was bright and
animated. Natásha was in a state of rapturous excitement such as she had not
known for a long time.
“What could we fasten this onto?” asked the servants, trying to fix a trunk on
the narrow footboard behind a carriage. “We must keep at least one cart.”
“What’s in it?” asked Natásha.
“The count’s books.”
“Leave it, Vasílich will put it away. It’s not wanted.”
The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where Count Peter
could sit.
“On the box. You’ll sit on the box, won’t you, Pétya?” cried Natásha.
Sónya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was quite different
from Natásha’s. She was putting away the things that had to be left behind and
making a list of them as the countess wished, and she tried to get as much taken
away with them as possible.
CHAPTER XVII
Before two o’clock in the afternoon the Rostóvs’ four carriages, packed full
and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door. One by one the carts with
the wounded had moved out of the yard.
The calèche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sónya’s
attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she was arranging
a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that stood at the entrance.
“Whose calèche is that?” she inquired, leaning out of the carriage window.
“Why, didn’t you know, Miss?” replied the maid. “The wounded prince: he
spent the night in our house and is going with us.”
“But who is it? What’s his name?”
“It’s our intended that was—Prince Bolkónski himself! They say he is dying,”
replied the maid with a sigh.
Sónya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess, tired out
and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey, was pacing up and
down the drawing room, waiting for the household to assemble for the usual
silent prayer with closed doors before starting. Natásha was not in the room.
“Mamma,” said Sónya, “Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is
going with us.”
The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sónya’s arm, glanced
around.
“Natásha?” she murmured.
At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them. They
knew their Natásha, and alarm as to what would happen if she heard this news
stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.
“Natásha does not know yet, but he is going with us,” said Sónya.
“You say he is dying?”
Sónya nodded.
The countess put her arms around Sónya and began to cry.
“The ways of God are past finding out!” she thought, feeling that the
Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all that was now
taking place.
“Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What’s the matter?” asked Natásha, as
with animated face she ran into the room.
“Nothing,” answered the countess. “If everything is ready let us start.”
And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face. Sónya
embraced Natásha and kissed her.
Natásha looked at her inquiringly.
“What is it? What has happened?”
“Nothing... No...”
“Is it something very bad for me? What is it?” persisted Natásha with her
quick intuition.
Sónya sighed and made no reply. The count, Pétya, Madame Schoss, Mávra
Kuzmínichna, and Vasílich came into the drawing room and, having closed the
doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments silently seated without
looking at one another.
The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed himself before the
icon. All the others did the same. Then the count embraced Mávra Kuzmínichna
and Vasílich, who were to remain in Moscow, and while they caught at his hand
and kissed his shoulder he patted their backs lightly with some vaguely
affectionate and comforting words. The countess went into the oratory and there
Sónya found her on her knees before the icons that had been left here and there
hanging on the wall. (The most precious ones, with which some family tradition
was connected, were being taken with them.)
In the porch and in the yard the men whom Pétya had armed with swords and
daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and with belts and girdles
tightened, were taking leave of those remaining behind.
As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put in the
wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on each side of the
open door and the carriage steps waiting to help the countess in, while maids
rushed with cushions and bundles from the house to the carriages, the calèche,
the phaeton, and back again.
“They always will forget everything!” said the countess. “Don’t you know I
can’t sit like that?”
And Dunyásha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an aggrieved
look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange the seat.
“Oh, those servants!” said the count, swaying his head.
Efím, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to drive
her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as glance round at what
was going on behind him. From thirty years’ experience he knew it would be
some time yet before the order, “Be off, in God’s name!” would be given him:
and he knew that even when it was said he would be stopped once or twice more
while they sent back to fetch something that had been forgotten, and even after
that he would again be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of the
window and beg him for the love of heaven to drive carefully down the hill. He
knew all this and therefore waited calmly for what would happen, with more
patience than the horses, especially the near one, the chestnut Falcon, who was
pawing the ground and champing his bit. At last all were seated, the carriage
steps were folded and pulled up, the door was shut, somebody was sent for a
traveling case, and the countess leaned out and said what she had to say. Then
Efím deliberately doffed his hat and began crossing himself. The postilion and
all the other servants did the same. “Off, in God’s name!” said Efím, putting on
his hat. “Start!” The postilion started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his
collar, the high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman
sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed out of the yard
onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted in their turn, and the
procession of carriages moved up the street. In the carriages, the calèche, and the
phaeton, all crossed themselves as they passed the church opposite the house.
Those who were to remain in Moscow walked on either side of the vehicles
seeing the travelers off.
Rarely had Natásha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting in the
carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly receding walls of forsaken,
agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned out of the carriage window and
looked back and then forward at the long train of wounded in front of them.
Almost at the head of the line she could see the raised hood of Prince Andrew’s
calèche. She did not know who was in it, but each time she looked at the
procession her eyes sought that calèche. She knew it was right in front.
In Kúdrino, from the Nikítski, Présnya, and Podnovínsk Streets came several
other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostóvs’, and as they passed along the
Sadóvaya Street the carriages and carts formed two rows abreast.
As they were going round the Súkharev water tower Natásha, who was
inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking past,
suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:
“Dear me! Mamma, Sónya, look, it’s he!”
“Who? Who?”
“Look! Yes, on my word, it’s Bezúkhov!” said Natásha, putting her head out
of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a coachman’s long coat, who
from his manner of walking and moving was evidently a gentleman in disguise,
and who was passing under the arch of the Súkharev tower accompanied by a
small, sallow-faced, beardless old man in a frieze coat.
“Yes, it really is Bezúkhov in a coachman’s coat, with a queer-looking old
boy. Really,” said Natásha, “look, look!”
“No, it’s not he. How can you talk such nonsense?”
“Mamma,” screamed Natásha, “I’ll stake my head it’s he! I assure you! Stop,
stop!” she cried to the coachman.
But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchánski Street came more
carts and carriages, and the Rostóvs were being shouted at to move on and not
block the way.
In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the Rostóvs all
saw Pierre—or someone extraordinarily like him—in a coachman’s coat, going
down the street with head bent and a serious face beside a small, beardless old
man who looked like a footman. That old man noticed a face thrust out of the
carriage window gazing at them, and respectfully touching Pierre’s elbow said
something to him and pointed to the carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in
thought, could not at first understand him. At length when he had understood
and looked in the direction the old man indicated, he recognized Natásha, and
following his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly toward the coach. But
having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember something and stopped.
Natásha’s face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical kindliness.
“Peter Kirílovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is wonderful!”
she cried, holding out her hand to him. “What are you doing? Why are you like
this?”
Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he walked along
beside her while the coach still moved on.
“What is the matter, Count?” asked the countess in a surprised and
commiserating tone.
“What? What? Why? Don’t ask me,” said Pierre, and looked round at Natásha
whose radiant, happy expression—of which he was conscious without looking at
her—filled him with enchantment.
“Are you remaining in Moscow, then?”
Pierre hesitated.
“In Moscow?” he said in a questioning tone. “Yes, in Moscow. Good-by!”
“Ah, if only I were a man! I’d certainly stay with you. How splendid!” said
Natásha. “Mamma, if you’ll let me, I’ll stay!”
Pierre glanced absently at Natásha and was about to say something, but the
countess interrupted him.
“You were at the battle, we heard.”
“Yes, I was,” Pierre answered. “There will be another battle tomorrow...” he
began, but Natásha interrupted him.
“But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like yourself....”
“Oh, don’t ask me, don’t ask me! I don’t know myself. Tomorrow... But no!
Good-by, good-by!” he muttered. “It’s an awful time!” and dropping behind the
carriage he stepped onto the pavement.
Natásha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming at him
with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile.
CHAPTER XVIII
For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been living in the
empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdéev. This is how it happened.
When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his
interview with Count Rostopchín, he could not for some time make out where he
was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that among others
awaiting him in his reception room there was a Frenchman who had brought a
letter from his wife, the Countess Hélène, he felt suddenly overcome by that
sense of confusion and hopelessness to which he was apt to succumb. He felt
that everything was now at an end, all was in confusion and crumbling to pieces,
that nobody was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was no escape
from this position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to himself, he first sat
down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then rose, went to the door of the
reception room and peeped through the crack, returned flourishing his arms, and
took up a book. His major-domo came in a second time to say that the
Frenchman who had brought the letter from the countess was very anxious to see
him if only for a minute, and that someone from Bazdéev’s widow had called to
ask Pierre to take charge of her husband’s books, as she herself was leaving for
the country.
“Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say I will come
directly,” Pierre replied to the major-domo.
But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat which was
lying on the table and went out of his study by the other door. There was no one
in the passage. He went along the whole length of this passage to the stairs and,
frowning and rubbing his forehead with both hands, went down as far as the first
landing. The hall porter was standing at the front door. From the landing where
Pierre stood there was a second staircase leading to the back entrance. He went
down that staircase and out into the yard. No one had seen him. But there were
some carriages waiting, and as soon as Pierre stepped out of the gate the
coachmen and the yard porter noticed him and raised their caps to him. When he
felt he was being looked at he behaved like an ostrich which hides its head in a
bush in order not to be seen: he hung his head and quickening his pace went
down the street.
Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph Bazdéev’s
books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.
He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the Patriarch’s Ponds,
where the widow Bazdéev’s house was.
Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that were making
their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing his bulky body so as not
to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle, Pierre, experiencing the joyful feeling
of a boy escaping from school, began to talk to his driver.
The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the Krémlin and
that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the Three Hills gates and a
great battle would be fought there.
Having reached the Patriarch’s Ponds Pierre found the Bazdéevs’ house,
where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the gate. Gerásim, that
sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at Torzhók five years before with
Joseph Bazdéev, came out in answer to his knock.
“At home?” asked Pierre.
“Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danílovna has gone to the
Torzhók estate with the children, your excellency.”
“I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books,” said Pierre.
“Be so good as to step in. Makár Alexéevich, the brother of my late master—
may the kingdom of heaven be his—has remained here, but he is in a weak state
as you know,” said the old servant.
Pierre knew that Makár Alexéevich was Joseph Bazdéev’s half-insane brother
and a hard drinker.
“Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in...” said Pierre and entered the house.
A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown and
with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing Pierre he
muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.
“He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your honor
sees,” said Gerásim. “Will you step into the study?” Pierre nodded. “As it was
sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia Danílovna gave orders that if anyone
should come from you they were to have the books.”
Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such trepidation
in his benefactor’s lifetime. The room, dusty and untouched since the death of
Joseph Bazdéev was now even gloomier.
Gerásim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe. Pierre went
round the study, approached the cupboard in which the manuscripts were kept,
and took out what had once been one of the most important, the holy of holies of
the order. This was the authentic Scotch Acts with Bazdéev’s notes and
explanations. He sat down at the dusty writing table, and, having laid the
manuscripts before him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them
away, and resting his head on his hand sank into meditation.
Gerásim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw Pierre always
sitting in the same attitude.
More than two hours passed and Gerásim took the liberty of making a slight
noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did not hear him.
“Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?”
“Oh yes!” said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. “Look here,” he
added, taking Gerásim by a button of his coat and looking down at the old man
with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, “I say, do you know that there is going to
be a battle tomorrow?”
“We heard so,” replied the man.
“I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you.”
“Yes, your excellency,” replied Gerásim. “Will you have something to eat?”
“No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a pistol,” said
Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.
“Yes, your excellency,” said Gerásim after thinking for a moment.
All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor’s study, and
Gerásim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to another and talking to
himself. And he spent the night on a bed made up for him there.
Gerásim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange things,
accepted Pierre’s taking up his residence in the house without surprise, and
seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same evening—without even
asking himself what they were wanted for—he procured a coachman’s coat and
cap for Pierre, and promised to get him the pistol next day. Makár Alexéevich
came twice that evening shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and
stopped and looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward
him he wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and angry
look and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the coachman’s coat which
Gerásim had procured for him and had disinfected by steam) was on his way
with the old man to buy the pistol at the Súkharev market that he met the
Rostóvs.
CHAPTER XIX
Kutúzov’s order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazán road was issued at
night on the first of September.
The first troops started at once, and during the night they marched slowly and
steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those nearing the town at the
Dorogomílov bridge saw ahead of them masses of soldiers crowding and
hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the opposite side and blocking the
streets and alleys, while endless masses of troops were bearing down on them
from behind, and an unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They all
rushed forward to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and the boats. Kutúzov
himself had driven round by side streets to the other side of Moscow.
By ten o’clock in the morning of the second of September, only the rear guard
remained in the Dorogomílov suburb, where they had ample room. The main
army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.
At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September, Napoleon
was standing among his troops on the Poklónny Hill looking at the panorama
spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to the second of
September, that is from the battle of Borodinó to the entry of the French into
Moscow, during the whole of that agitating, memorable week, there had been the
extraordinary autumn weather that always comes as a surprise, when the sun
hangs low and gives more heat than in spring, when everything shines so
brightly in the rare clear atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are
strengthened and refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the
nights are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and
delight us continually by falling from the sky.
At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather still held.
The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the Poklónny
Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens, and her churches, and
she seemed to be living her usual life, her cupolas glittering like stars in the
sunlight.
The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as he had
never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious and uneasy curiosity
men feel when they see an alien form of life that has no knowledge of them. This
city was evidently living with the full force of its own life. By the indefinite
signs which, even at a distance, distinguish a living body from a dead one,
Napoleon from the Poklónny Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt,
as it were, the breathing of that great and beautiful body.
Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every foreigner
who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the mother city, must feel
her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.
“Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables églises, Moscou la sainte. La voilà
donc enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il était temps,” * said he, and dismounting he
ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before him, and summoned Lelorgne
d’Ideville, the interpreter.
* “That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy
Moscow! Here it is then at last, that famous city. It was
high time.”
“A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her honor,”
thought he (he had said so to Túchkov at Smolénsk). From that point of view he
gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen before. It seemed strange to him
that his long-felt wish, which had seemed unattainable, had at last been realized.
In the clear morning light he gazed now at the city and now at the plan,
considering its details, and the assurance of possessing it agitated and awed him.
“But could it be otherwise?” he thought. “Here is this capital at my feet.
Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange, beautiful, and
majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In what light must I appear to
them!” thought he, thinking of his troops. “Here she is, the reward for all those
fainthearted men,” he reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops who
were approaching and forming up. “One word from me, one movement of my
hand, and that ancient capital of the Tsars would perish. But my clemency is
always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly
great. But no, it can’t be true that I am in Moscow,” he suddenly thought. “Yet
here she is lying at my feet, with her golden domes and crosses scintillating and
twinkling in the sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of
barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy.... It is
just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him.” (It seemed to
Napoleon that the chief import of what was taking place lay in the personal
struggle between himself and Alexander.) “From the height of the Krémlin—yes,
there is the Krémlin, yes—I will give them just laws; I will teach them the
meaning of true civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember their
conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do not, desire
war, that I have waged war only against the false policy of their court; that I love
and respect Alexander and that in Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy
of myself and of my people. I do not wish to utilize the fortunes of war to
humiliate an honored monarch. ‘Boyars,’ I will say to them, ‘I do not desire war,
I desire the peace and welfare of all my subjects.’ However, I know their
presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly,
impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in Moscow? Yes,
there she lies.”
“Qu’on m’amène les boyars,” * said he to his suite.
* “Bring the boyars to me.”
A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the boyars.
Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the same
place on the Poklónny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to the boyars had
already taken definite shape in his imagination. That speech was full of dignity
and greatness as Napoleon understood it.
He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended to adopt
toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for assemblies at the
palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and his own would mingle. He
mentally appointed a governor, one who would win the hearts of the people.
Having learned that there were many charitable institutions in Moscow he
mentally decided that he would shower favors on them all. He thought that, as in
Africa he had to put on a burnoose and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must
be beneficent like the Tsars. And in order finally to touch the hearts of the
Russians—and being like all Frenchmen unable to imagine anything sentimental
without a reference to ma chère, ma tendre, ma pauvre mère * —he decided that
he would place an inscription on all these establishments in large letters: “This
establishment is dedicated to my dear mother.” Or no, it should be simply:
Maison de ma Mère, *(2) he concluded. “But am I really in Moscow? Yes, here
it lies before me, but why is the deputation from the city so long in appearing?”
he wondered.
* “My dear, my tender, my poor mother.”
Again the officer turned to Gerásim and asked him to show him the rooms in
the house.
“Master, not here—don’t understand... me, you...” said Gerásim, trying to
render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.
Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before Gerásim’s nose,
intimating that he did not understand him either, and moved, limping, to the door
at which Pierre was standing. Pierre wished to go away and conceal himself, but
at that moment he saw Makár Alexéevich appearing at the open kitchen door
with the pistol in his hand. With a madman’s cunning, Makár Alexéevich eyed
the Frenchman, raised his pistol, and took aim.
“Board them!” yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger. Hearing the
yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment Pierre threw himself on
the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and struck up the pistol Makár
Alexéevich at last got his fingers on the trigger, there was a deafening report, and
all were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed
to the door.
Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French, Pierre,
snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to the officer and
addressed him in French.
“You are not wounded?” he asked.
“I think not,” answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. “But I have had
a lucky escape this time,” he added, pointing to the damaged plaster of the wall.
“Who is that man?” said he, looking sternly at Pierre.
“Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred,” said Pierre rapidly, quite
forgetting the part he had intended to play. “He is an unfortunate madman who
did not know what he was doing.”
The officer went up to Makár Alexéevich and took him by the collar.
Makár Alexéevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about to fall
asleep, as he leaned against the wall.
“Brigand! You shall pay for this,” said the Frenchman, letting go of him. “We
French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon traitors,” he added, with
a look of gloomy dignity and a fine energetic gesture.
Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold that drunken
imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence with the same gloomy
expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with a smile. For a few seconds he
looked at him in silence. His handsome face assumed a melodramatically gentle
expression and he held out his hand.
“You have saved my life. You are French,” said he.
For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman could
perform a great deed, and to save his life—the life of M. Ramballe, captain of
the 13th Light Regiment—was undoubtedly a very great deed.
But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer’s conviction based
upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.
“I am Russian,” he said quickly.
“Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others,” said the officer, waving his finger before his
nose and smiling. “You shall tell me all about that presently. I am delighted to
meet a compatriot. Well, and what are we to do with this man?” he added,
addressing himself to Pierre as to a brother.
Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that loftiest of
human appellations he could not renounce it, said the officer’s look and tone. In
reply to his last question Pierre again explained who Makár Alexéevich was and
how just before their arrival that drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol
which they had not had time to recover from him, and begged the officer to let
the deed go unpunished.
The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with his arm.
“You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant it you.
Lead that man away!” said he quickly and energetically, and taking the arm of
Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for saving his life, he went
with him into the room.
The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage asking what
had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish the culprits, but the
officer sternly checked them.
“You will be called in when you are wanted,” he said.
The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile had time to
visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.
“Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen,” said he. “Shall I
serve them up?”
“Yes, and some wine,” answered the captain.
CHAPTER XXIX
When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter again
thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and wished to go away,
but the officer would not hear of it. He was so very polite, amiable, good-
natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre for saving his life that Pierre had not
the heart to refuse, and sat down with him in the parlor—the first room they
entered. To Pierre’s assurances that he was not a Frenchman, the captain,
evidently not understanding how anyone could decline so flattering an
appellation, shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre absolutely insisted on
passing for a Russian let it be so, but for all that he would be forever bound to
Pierre by gratitude for saving his life.
Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving the
feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre’s feelings were, the
latter would probably have left him, but the man’s animated obtuseness to
everything other than himself disarmed Pierre.
“A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito,” said the officer, looking at
Pierre’s fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his finger. “I owe my life to
you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman never forgets either an insult or a
service. I offer you my friendship. That is all I can say.”
There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of the word)
in the officer’s voice, in the expression of his face and in his gestures, that Pierre,
unconsciously smiling in response to the Frenchman’s smile, pressed the hand
held out to him.
“Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the Legion of
Honor for the affair on the seventh of September,” he introduced himself, a self-
satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his lips under his mustache. “Will you
now be so good as to tell me with whom I have the honor of conversing so
pleasantly, instead of being in the ambulance with that maniac’s bullet in my
body?”
Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing, began to try to
invent a name and to say something about his reason for concealing it, but the
Frenchman hastily interrupted him.
“Oh, please!” said he. “I understand your reasons. You are an officer... a
superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us. That’s not my
business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am quite at your service.
You belong to the gentry?” he concluded with a shade of inquiry in his tone.
Pierre bent his head. “Your baptismal name, if you please. That is all I ask.
Monsieur Pierre, you say.... That’s all I want to know.”
When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and vodka
brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a Russian cellar and
brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share his dinner, and himself
began to eat greedily and quickly like a healthy and hungry man, munching his
food rapidly with his strong teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating
—“Excellent! Delicious!” His face grew red and was covered with perspiration.
Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the orderly,
brought some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of claret in it. He also
brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the kitchen for them to try. That beverage
was already known to the French and had been given a special name. They
called it limonade de cochon (pig’s lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the
limonade de cochon he had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine
they had taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and
applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to its neck in
a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for Pierre. The satisfaction of
his hunger and the wine rendered the captain still more lively and he chatted
incessantly all through dinner.
“Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for saving me
from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my body already. Here is
one I got at Wagram” (he touched his side) “and a second at Smolénsk”—he
showed a scar on his cheek—“and this leg which as you see does not want to
march, I got that on the seventh at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacré Dieu! It
was splendid! That deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us
there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of the cough
I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity those who did not see it.”
“I was there,” said Pierre.
“Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes. The great
redoubt held out well, by my pipe!” continued the Frenchman. “And you made
us pay dear for it. I was at it three times—sure as I sit here. Three times we
reached the guns and three times we were thrown back like cardboard figures.
Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur Pierre! Your grenadiers were splendid, by
heaven! I saw them close up their ranks six times in succession and march as if
on parade. Fine fellows! Our King of Naples, who knows what’s what, cried
‘Bravo!’ Ha, ha! So you are one of us soldiers!” he added, smiling, after a
momentary pause. “So much the better, so much the better, Monsieur Pierre!
Terrible in battle... gallant... with the fair” (he winked and smiled), “that’s what
the French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren’t they?”
The captain was so naïvely and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so pleased
with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked merrily at him.
Probably the word “gallant” turned the captain’s thoughts to the state of
Moscow.
“Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left Moscow?
What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?”
“Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered it?” asked
Pierre.
“Ha, ha, ha!” The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle, patting
Pierre on the shoulder. “What a thing to say!” he exclaimed. “Paris?... But Paris,
Paris...”
“Paris—the capital of the world,” Pierre finished his remark for him.
The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in the middle of
his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly eyes.
“Well, if you hadn’t told me you were Russian, I should have wagered that
you were Parisian! You have that... I don’t know what, that...” and having uttered
this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.
“I have been in Paris. I spent years there,” said Pierre.
“Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn’t know Paris is a
savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is Talma, la Duchénois,
Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards,” and noticing that his conclusion was
weaker than what had gone before, he added quickly: “There is only one Paris in
the world. You have been to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I don’t
esteem you the less for it.”
Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days he had spent
alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre involuntarily enjoyed talking with this
cheerful and good-natured man.
“To return to your ladies—I hear they are lovely. What a wretched idea to go
and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army is in Moscow. What a
chance those girls have missed! Your peasants, now—that’s another thing; but
you civilized people, you ought to know us better than that. We took Vienna,
Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome, Warsaw, all the world’s capitals.... We are feared,
but we are loved. We are nice to know. And then the Emperor...” he began, but
Pierre interrupted him.
“The Emperor,” Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and
embarrassed, “is the Emperor...?”
“The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius—that’s what the
Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I assure you I was his enemy
eight years ago. My father was an emigrant count.... But that man has
vanquished me. He has taken hold of me. I could not resist the sight of the
grandeur and glory with which he has covered France. When I understood what
he wanted—when I saw that he was preparing a bed of laurels for us, you know,
I said to myself: ‘That is a monarch,’ and I devoted myself to him! So there! Oh
yes, mon cher, he is the greatest man of the ages past or future.”
“Is he in Moscow?” Pierre stammered with a guilty look.
The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.
“No, he will make his entry tomorrow,” he replied, and continued his talk.
Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at the gate
and by Morel, who came to say that some Württemberg hussars had come and
wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the captain’s horses were. This
difficulty had arisen chiefly because the hussars did not understand what was
said to them in French.
The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern voice asked him
to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding officer, and by what
right he allowed himself to claim quarters that were already occupied. The
German who knew little French, answered the two first questions by giving the
names of his regiment and of his commanding officer, but in reply to the third
question which he did not understand said, introducing broken French into his
own German, that he was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander
had ordered him to occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who knew
German, translated what the German said to the captain and gave the captain’s
reply to the Württemberg hussar in German. When he had understood what was
said to him, the German submitted and took his men elsewhere. The captain
went out into the porch and gave some orders in a loud voice.
When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as before,
with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He really was suffering
at that moment. When the captain went out and he was left alone, suddenly he
came to himself and realized the position he was in. It was not that Moscow had
been taken or that the happy conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing
him. Painful as that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the moment.
He was tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The few glasses of
wine he had drunk and the conversation with this good-natured man had
destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which he had spent the last few
days and which was essential for the execution of his design. The pistol, dagger,
and peasant coat were ready. Napoleon was to enter the town next day. Pierre
still considered that it would be a useful and worthy action to slay the evildoer,
but now he felt that he would not do it. He did not know why, but he felt a
foreboding that he would not carry out his intention. He struggled against the
confession of his weakness but dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that
his former gloomy frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and self-
sacrifice, had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first man he met.
The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a tune.
The Frenchman’s chatter which had previously amused Pierre now repelled
him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture with which he twirled
his mustache, all now seemed offensive. “I will go away immediately. I won’t
say another word to him,” thought Pierre. He thought this, but still sat in the
same place. A strange feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get
up and go away, but could not do so.
The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up and down
the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as if he were smiling
to himself at some amusing thought.
“The colonel of those Württembergers is delightful,” he suddenly said. “He’s a
German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he’s a German.” He sat down
facing Pierre. “By the way, you know German, then?”
Pierre looked at him in silence.
“What is the German for ‘shelter’?”
“Shelter?” Pierre repeated. “The German for shelter is Unterkunft.”
“How do you say it?” the captain asked quickly and doubtfully.
“Unterkunft,” Pierre repeated.
“Onterkoff,” said the captain and looked at Pierre for some seconds with
laughing eyes. “These Germans are first-rate fools, don’t you think so, Monsieur
Pierre?” he concluded.
“Well, let’s have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux, shall we? Morel
will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!” he called out gaily.
Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at Pierre by
the candlelight and was evidently struck by the troubled expression on his
companion’s face. Ramballe, with genuine distress and sympathy in his face,
went up to Pierre and bent over him.
“There now, we’re sad,” said he, touching Pierre’s hand. “Have I upset you?
No, really, have you anything against me?” he asked Pierre. “Perhaps it’s the
state of affairs?”
Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the Frenchman’s eyes whose
expression of sympathy was pleasing to him.
“Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for you. Can
I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and death. I say it with my
hand on my heart!” said he, striking his chest.
“Thank you,” said Pierre.
The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when he learned that
“shelter” was Unterkunft in German, and his face suddenly brightened.
“Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!” he cried gaily, filling two
glasses with wine.
Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied his too, again
pressed Pierre’s hand, and leaned his elbows on the table in a pensive attitude.
“Yes, my dear friend,” he began, “such is fortune’s caprice. Who would have
said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons in the service of
Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am in Moscow with him. I must
tell you, mon cher,” he continued in the sad and measured tones of a man who
intends to tell a long story, “that our name is one of the most ancient in France.”
And with a Frenchman’s easy and naïve frankness the captain told Pierre the
story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and manhood, and all about his
relations and his financial and family affairs, “ma pauvre mère” playing of
course an important part in the story.
“But all that is only life’s setting, the real thing is love—love! Am I not right,
Monsieur Pierre?” said he, growing animated. “Another glass?”
Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third.
“Oh, women, women!” and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at Pierre,
began talking of love and of his love affairs.
There were very many of these, as one could easily believe, looking at the
officer’s handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the eager enthusiasm with
which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe’s love stories had the sensual
character which Frenchmen regard as the special charm and poetry of love, yet
he told his story with such sincere conviction that he alone had experienced and
known all the charm of love and he described women so alluringly that Pierre
listened to him with curiosity.
It was plain that l’amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not that
low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor was it the
romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for Natásha. (Ramballe
despised both these kinds of love equally: the one he considered the “love of
clodhoppers” and the other the “love of simpletons.”) L’amour which the
Frenchman worshiped consisted principally in the unnaturalness of his relation
to the woman and in a combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the
feeling.
Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a fascinating
marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a charming, innocent child of
seventeen, daughter of the bewitching marquise. The conflict of magnanimity
between the mother and the daughter, ending in the mother’s sacrificing herself
and offering her daughter in marriage to her lover, even now agitated the captain,
though it was the memory of a distant past. Then he recounted an episode in
which the husband played the part of the lover, and he—the lover—assumed the
role of the husband, as well as several droll incidents from his recollections of
Germany, where “shelter” is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat
sauerkraut and the young girls are “too blonde.”
Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain’s memory, and
which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face, was of how he had
saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving of life continually occurred in the
captain’s stories) and the Pole had entrusted to him his enchanting wife
(parisienne de cœur) while himself entering the French service. The captain was
happy, the enchanting Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by
magnanimity, the captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as he did so: “I
have saved your life, and I save your honor!” Having repeated these words the
captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a shake, as if driving away the
weakness which assailed him at this touching recollection.
Listening to the captain’s tales, Pierre—as often happens late in the evening
and under the influence of wine—followed all that was told him, understood it
all, and at the same time followed a train of personal memories which, he knew
not why, suddenly arose in his mind. While listening to these love stories his
own love for Natásha unexpectedly rose to his mind, and going over the pictures
of that love in his imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe’s
tales. Listening to the story of the struggle between love and duty, Pierre saw
before his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting with the object of his
love at the Súkharev water tower. At the time of that meeting it had not produced
an effect upon him—he had not even once recalled it. But now it seemed to him
that that meeting had had in it something very important and poetic.
“Peter Kirílovich, come here! We have recognized you,” he now seemed to
hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes, her smile, her
traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and there seemed to him something
pathetic and touching in all this.
Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the captain asked
Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to sacrifice himself for love
and a feeling of envy of the legitimate husband.
Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need to express
the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that he understood love for
a woman somewhat differently. He said that in all his life he had loved and still
loved only one woman, and that she could never be his.
“Tiens!” said the captain.
Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest years, but
that he had not dared to think of her because she was too young, and because he
had been an illegitimate son without a name. Afterwards when he had received a
name and wealth he dared not think of her because he loved her too well, placing
her far above everything in the world, and especially therefore above himself.
When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether he
understood that.
The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not understand it he
begged Pierre to continue.
“Platónic love, clouds...” he muttered.
Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or the
thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of those who played a
part in his story, or whether it was all these things together, something loosened
Pierre’s tongue. Speaking thickly and with a faraway look in his shining eyes, he
told the whole story of his life: his marriage, Natásha’s love for his best friend,
her betrayal of him, and all his own simple relations with her. Urged on by
Ramballe’s questions he also told what he had at first concealed—his own
position and even his name.
More than anything else in Pierre’s story the captain was impressed by the fact
that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in Moscow, and that he had
abandoned everything and not left the city, but remained there concealing his
name and station.
When it was late at night they went out together into the street. The night was
warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokróvka a fire glowed—the first
of those that were beginning in Moscow. To the right and high up in the sky was
the sickle of the waning moon and opposite to it hung that bright comet which
was connected in Pierre’s heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerásim, the
cook, and two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible
remarks in two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow seen in
the town.
There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire in the immense city.
Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet, and at the glow from
the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful emotion. “There now, how good it is, what
more does one need?” thought he. And suddenly remembering his intention he
grew dizzy and felt so faint that he leaned against the fence to save himself from
falling.
Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with unsteady steps
and returning to his room lay down on the sofa and immediately fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXX
The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was watched
from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the retreating troops,
with many different feelings.
The Rostóv party spent the night at Mytíshchi, fourteen miles from Moscow.
They had started so late on the first of September, the road had been so blocked
by vehicles and troops, so many things had been forgotten for which servants
were sent back, that they had decided to spend that night at a place three miles
out of Moscow. The next morning they woke late and were again delayed so
often that they only got as far as Great Mytíshchi. At ten o’clock that evening the
Rostóv family and the wounded traveling with them were all distributed in the
yards and huts of that large village. The Rostóvs’ servants and coachmen and the
orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to their masters, had supper,
fed the horses, and came out into the porches.
In a neighboring hut lay Raévski’s adjutant with a fractured wrist. The awful
pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and piteously, and his moaning
sounded terrible in the darkness of the autumn night. He had spent the first night
in the same yard as the Rostóvs. The countess said she had been unable to close
her eyes on account of his moaning, and at Mytíshchi she moved into a worse
hut simply to be farther away from the wounded man.
In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above the high body
of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow of another fire. One glow
had long been visible and everybody knew that it was Little Mytíshchi burning
—set on fire by Mamónov’s Cossacks.
“But look here, brothers, there’s another fire!” remarked an orderly.
All turned their attention to the glow.
“But they told us Little Mytíshchi had been set on fire by Mamónov’s
Cossacks.”
“But that’s not Mytíshchi, it’s farther away.”
“Look, it must be in Moscow!”
Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and sat down on
its steps.
“It’s more to the left, why, Little Mytíshchi is over there, and this is right on
the other side.”
Several men joined the first two.
“See how it’s flaring,” said one. “That’s a fire in Moscow: either in the
Sushchévski or the Rogózhski quarter.”
No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed silently at the
spreading flames of the second fire in the distance.
Old Daniel Teréntich, the count’s valet (as he was called), came up to the
group and shouted at Míshka.
“What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be calling
and there’s nobody there; go and gather the clothes together.”
“I only ran out to get some water,” said Míshka.
“But what do you think, Daniel Teréntich? Doesn’t it look as if that glow were
in Moscow?” remarked one of the footmen.
Daniel Teréntich made no reply, and again for a long time they were all silent.
The glow spread, rising and falling, farther and farther still.
“God have mercy.... It’s windy and dry...” said another voice.
“Just look! See what it’s doing now. O Lord! You can even see the crows
flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!”
“They’ll put it out, no fear!”
“Who’s to put it out?” Daniel Teréntich, who had hitherto been silent, was
heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. “Moscow it is, brothers,” said
he. “Mother Moscow, the white...” his voice faltered, and he gave way to an old
man’s sob.
And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the significance for
them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were heard, words of prayer, and the
sobbing of the count’s old valet.
CHAPTER XXXI
The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that Moscow was
burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to look. Sónya and
Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out with him. Only Natásha
and the countess remained in the room. Pétya was no longer with the family, he
had gone on with his regiment which was making for Tróitsa.
The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry. Natásha,
pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the icons just where she
had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to her father’s words. She was
listening to the ceaseless moaning of the adjutant, three houses off.
“Oh, how terrible,” said Sónya returning from the yard chilled and frightened.
“I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there’s an awful glow! Natásha, do
look! You can see it from the window,” she said to her cousin, evidently wishing
to distract her mind.
But Natásha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to her and
again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had been in this condition of
stupor since the morning, when Sónya, to the surprise and annoyance of the
countess, had for some unaccountable reason found it necessary to tell Natásha
of Prince Andrew’s wound and of his being with their party. The countess had
seldom been so angry with anyone as she was with Sónya. Sónya had cried and
begged to be forgiven and now, as if trying to atone for her fault, paid unceasing
attention to her cousin.
“Look, Natásha, how dreadfully it is burning!” said she.
“What’s burning?” asked Natásha. “Oh, yes, Moscow.”
And as if in order not to offend Sónya and to get rid of her, she turned her face
to the window, looked out in such a way that it was evident that she could not
see anything, and again settled down in her former attitude.
“But you didn’t see it!”
“Yes, really I did,” Natásha replied in a voice that pleaded to be left in peace.
Both the countess and Sónya understood that, naturally, neither Moscow nor
the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of importance to Natásha.
The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess went up
to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand as she was wont
to do when Natásha was ill, then touched her forehead with her lips as if to feel
whether she was feverish, and finally kissed her.
“You are cold. You are trembling all over. You’d better lie down,” said the
countess.
“Lie down? All right, I will. I’ll lie down at once,” said Natásha.
When Natásha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was seriously
wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first asked many
questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it serious? And
could she see him? But after she had been told that she could not see him, that he
was seriously wounded but that his life was not in danger, she ceased to ask
questions or to speak at all, evidently disbelieving what they told her, and
convinced that say what she might she would still be told the same. All the way
she had sat motionless in a corner of the coach with wide open eyes, and the
expression in them which the countess knew so well and feared so much, and
now she sat in the same way on the bench where she had seated herself on
arriving. She was planning something and either deciding or had already decided
something in her mind. The countess knew this, but what it might be she did not
know, and this alarmed and tormented her.
“Natásha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed.”
A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame Schoss
and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.
“No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor,” Natásha replied irritably and
she went to the window and opened it. Through the open window the moans of
the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She put her head out into the damp
night air, and the countess saw her slim neck shaking with sobs and throbbing
against the window frame. Natásha knew it was not Prince Andrew who was
moaning. She knew Prince Andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a
part of the hut across the passage; but this dreadful incessant moaning made her
sob. The countess exchanged a look with Sónya.
“Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet,” said the countess, softly touching
Natásha’s shoulders. “Come, lie down.”
“Oh, yes... I’ll lie down at once,” said Natásha, and began hurriedly
undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.
When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket, she sat down
with her foot under her on the bed that had been made up on the floor, jerked her
thin and rather short plait of hair to the front, and began replaiting it. Her long,
thin, practiced fingers rapidly unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head
moved from side to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked fixedly
before her. When her toilet for the night was finished she sank gently onto the
sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the door.
“Natásha, you’d better lie in the middle,” said Sónya.
“I’ll stay here,” muttered Natásha. “Do lie down,” she added crossly, and
buried her face in the pillow.
The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sónya undressed hastily and lay down.
The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left in the room. But in
the yard there was a light from the fire at Little Mytíshchi a mile and a half
away, and through the night came the noise of people shouting at a tavern
Mamónov’s Cossacks had set up across the street, and the adjutant’s unceasing
moans could still be heard.
For a long time Natásha listened attentively to the sounds that reached her
from inside and outside the room and did not move. First she heard her mother
praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed under her, then Madame Schoss’
familiar whistling snore and Sónya’s gentle breathing. Then the countess called
to Natásha. Natásha did not answer.
“I think she’s asleep, Mamma,” said Sónya softly.
After a short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one replied.
Soon after that Natásha heard her mother’s even breathing. Natásha did not
move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the quilt, was growing
cold on the bare floor.
As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in a crack in the
wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near by. The shouting in the
tavern had died down; only the moaning of the adjutant was heard. Natásha sat
up.
“Sónya, are you asleep? Mamma?” she whispered.
No one replied. Natásha rose slowly and carefully, crossed herself, and
stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her slim, supple, bare feet.
The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping cautiously from one foot to the other
she ran like a kitten the few steps to the door and grasped the cold door handle.
It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically against all the
walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking with alarm and terror and
overflowing with love.
She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the cold, damp
earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed her. With her bare feet
she touched a sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened the door into the part
of the hut where Prince Andrew lay. It was dark in there. In the farthest corner,
on a bench beside a bed on which something was lying, stood a tallow candle
with a long, thick, and smoldering wick.
From the moment she had been told that morning of Prince Andrew’s wound
and his presence there, Natásha had resolved to see him. She did not know why
she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt the more convinced
that it was necessary.
All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now that the
moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might see. How was he
maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that incessant moaning of the
adjutant’s? Yes, he was altogether like that. In her imagination he was that
terrible moaning personified. When she saw an indistinct shape in the corner,
and mistook his knees raised under the quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a
horrible body there, and stood still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her
forward. She cautiously took one step and then another, and found herself in the
middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man—Timókhin—was
lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons, and two others—the doctor
and a valet—lay on the floor.
The valet sat up and whispered something. Timókhin, kept awake by the pain
in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange apparition of a girl
in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and nightcap. The valet’s sleepy, frightened
exclamation, “What do you want? What’s the matter?” made Natásha approach
more swiftly to what was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body
looked, she must see him. She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle
wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the quilt, and
such as she had always seen him.
He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his glittering eyes
rapturously turned toward her, and especially his neck, delicate as a child’s,
revealed by the turn-down collar of his shirt, gave him a peculiarly innocent,
childlike look, such as she had never seen on him before. She went up to him
and with a swift, flexible, youthful movement dropped on her knees.
He smiled and held out his hand to her.
CHAPTER XXXII
Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the ambulance
station on the field of Borodinó. His feverish state and the inflammation of his
bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor’s opinion sure to carry him off.
But on the seventh day he ate with pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and
the doctor noticed that his temperature was lower. He had regained
consciousness that morning. The first night after they left Moscow had been
fairly warm and he had remained in the calèche, but at Mytíshchi the wounded
man himself asked to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his
removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose consciousness.
When he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a long time motionless with
closed eyes. Then he opened them and whispered softly: “And the tea?” His
remembering such a small detail of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt
Prince Andrew’s pulse, and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had
improved. He was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient
did not die now, he would do so a little later with greater suffering. Timókhin,
the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew’s regiment, had joined him in Moscow
and was being taken along with him, having been wounded in the leg at the
battle of Borodinó. They were accompanied by a doctor, Prince Andrew’s valet,
his coachman, and two orderlies.
They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking with feverish
eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to understand and remember
something.
“I don’t want any more. Is Timókhin here?” he asked.
Timókhin crept along the bench to him.
“I am here, your excellency.”
“How’s your wound?”
“Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?”
Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.
“Couldn’t one get a book?” he asked.
“What book?”
“The Gospels. I haven’t one.”
The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he was
feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly but reasonably,
and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him as he was uncomfortable and
in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted the cloak with which he was covered
and, making wry faces at the noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from
the wound, began examining that dreadful place. The doctor was very much
displeased about something and made a change in the dressings, turning the
wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew unconscious and delirious
from the agony. He kept asking them to get him the book and put it under him.
“What trouble would it be to you?” he said. “I have not got one. Please get it
for me and put it under for a moment,” he pleaded in a piteous voice.
The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.
“You fellows have no conscience,” said he to the valet who was pouring water
over his hands. “For just one moment I didn’t look after you... It’s such pain, you
know, that I wonder how he can bear it.”
“By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under him!” said
the valet.
The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was the
matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he asked to
be carried into the hut after his calèche had stopped at Mytíshchi. After growing
confused from pain while being carried into the hut he again regained
consciousness, and while drinking tea once more recalled all that had happened
to him, and above all vividly remembered the moment at the ambulance station
when, at the sight of the sufferings of a man he disliked, those new thoughts had
come to him which promised him happiness. And those thoughts, though now
vague and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he had now
a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to do with the
Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of them. The uncomfortable position
in which they had put him and turned him over again confused his thoughts, and
when he came to himself a third time it was in the complete stillness of the night.
Everybody near him was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage;
someone was shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the table,
on the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the head of the bed and
around the candle beside him, the wick of which was charred and had shaped
itself like a mushroom.
His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of, feels, and
remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the power and will to
select one sequence of thoughts or events on which to fix his whole attention. A
healthy man can tear himself away from the deepest reflections to say a civil
word to someone who comes in and can then return again to his own thoughts.
But Prince Andrew’s mind was not in a normal state in that respect. All the
powers of his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted apart
from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images occupied him simultaneously.
At times his brain suddenly began to work with a vigor, clearness, and depth it
had never reached when he was in health, but suddenly in the midst of its work it
would turn to some unexpected idea and he had not the strength to turn it back
again.
“Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be deprived,”
he thought as he lay in the semidarkness of the quiet hut, gazing fixedly before
him with feverish wide open eyes. “A happiness lying beyond material forces,
outside the material influences that act on man—a happiness of the soul alone,
the happiness of loving. Every man can understand it, but to conceive it and
enjoin it was possible only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why
was the Son...?”
And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince Andrew
heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality) a soft whispering
voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating “piti-piti-piti,” and then “titi,” and
then again “piti-piti-piti,” and “ti-ti” once more. At the same time he felt that
above his face, above the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was
being erected out of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this whispered
music. He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it was difficult) so that
this airy structure should not collapse; but nevertheless it kept collapsing and
again slowly rising to the sound of whispered rhythmic music—“it stretches,
stretches, spreading out and stretching,” said Prince Andrew to himself. While
listening to this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out and the
construction of this edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a red halo round
the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and the buzzing of the fly that
flopped against his pillow and his face. Each time the fly touched his face it gave
him a burning sensation and yet to his surprise it did not destroy the structure,
though it knocked against the very region of his face where it was rising. But
besides this there was something else of importance. It was something white by
the door—the statue of a sphinx, which also oppressed him.
“But perhaps that’s my shirt on the table,” he thought, “and that’s my legs, and
that is the door, but why is it always stretching and drawing itself out, and ‘piti-
piti-piti’ and ‘ti-ti’ and ‘piti-piti-piti’...? That’s enough, please leave off!” Prince
Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings again
swam to the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and force.
“Yes—love,” he thought again quite clearly. “But not love which loves for
something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some reason, but the love
which I—while dying—first experienced when I saw my enemy and yet loved
him. I experienced that feeling of love which is the very essence of the soul and
does not require an object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one’s neighbors,
to love one’s enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His manifestations.
It is possible to love someone dear to you with human love, but an enemy can
only be loved by divine love. That is why I experienced such joy when I felt that
I loved that man. What has become of him? Is he alive?...
“When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but divine
love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can destroy it. It is the
very essence of the soul. Yet how many people have I hated in my life? And of
them all, I loved and hated none as I did her.” And he vividly pictured to himself
Natásha, not as he had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave
him delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And he
understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now understood
for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her, the cruelty of his rupture
with her. “If only it were possible for me to see her once more! Just once,
looking into those eyes to say...”
“Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!” flopped the fly.... And his
attention was suddenly carried into another world, a world of reality and
delirium in which something particular was happening. In that world some
structure was still being erected and did not fall, something was still stretching
out, and the candle with its red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike
sphinx lay near the door; but besides all this something creaked, there was a
whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the door. And
that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very Natásha of whom he
had just been thinking.
“Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is,” thought Prince Andrew,
trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face remained before him
with the force of reality and drew nearer. Prince Andrew wished to return to that
former world of pure thought, but he could not, and delirium drew him back into
its domain. The soft whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur, something
oppressed him and stretched out, and the strange face was before him. Prince
Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his senses, he moved a
little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like
a man plunged into water he lost consciousness. When he came to himself,
Natásha, that same living Natásha whom of all people he most longed to love
with this new pure divine love that had been revealed to him, was kneeling
before him. He realized that it was the real living Natásha, and he was not
surprised but quietly happy. Natásha, motionless on her knees (she was unable to
stir), with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining her sobs. Her face was
pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it something quivered.
Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.
“You?” he said. “How fortunate!”
With a rapid but careful movement Natásha drew nearer to him on her knees
and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and began kissing it, just
touching it lightly with her lips.
“Forgive me!” she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him. “Forgive
me!”
“I love you,” said Prince Andrew.
“Forgive...!”
“Forgive what?” he asked.
“Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!” faltered Natásha in a scarcely audible,
broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more rapidly, just touching it with
her lips.
“I love you more, better than before,” said Prince Andrew, lifting her face
with his hand so as to look into her eyes.
Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly, compassionately,
and with joyous love. Natásha’s thin pale face, with its swollen lips, was more
than plain—it was dreadful. But Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her
shining eyes which were beautiful. They heard the sound of voices behind them.
Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor. Timókhin,
who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had long been watching all
that was going on, carefully covering his bare body with the sheet as he huddled
up on his bench.
“What’s this?” said the doctor, rising from his bed. “Please go away, madam!”
At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her daughter’s
absence, knocked at the door.
Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natásha went out of the room
and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.
From that time, during all the rest of the Rostóvs’ journey, at every halting
place and wherever they spent a night, Natásha never left the wounded
Bolkónski, and the doctor had to admit that he had not expected from a young
girl either such firmness or such skill in nursing a wounded man.
Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew die in
her daughter’s arms during the journey—as, judging by what the doctor said, it
seemed might easily happen—she could not oppose Natásha. Though with the
intimacy now established between the wounded man and Natásha the thought
occurred that should he recover their former engagement would be renewed, no
one—least of all Natásha and Prince Andrew—spoke of this: the unsettled
question of life and death, which hung not only over Bolkónski but over all
Russia, shut out all other considerations.
CHAPTER XXXIII
On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching, the clothes
in which he had slept without undressing felt uncomfortable on his body, and his
mind had a dim consciousness of something shameful he had done the day
before. That something shameful was his yesterday’s conversation with Captain
Ramballe.
It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of doors. Pierre
rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an engraved stock which
Gerásim had replaced on the writing table, he remembered where he was and
what lay before him that very day.
“Am I not too late?” he thought. “No, probably he won’t make his entry into
Moscow before noon.”
Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him, but hastened to
act.
After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to go out. But it
then occurred to him for the first time that he certainly could not carry the
weapon in his hand through the streets. It was difficult to hide such a big pistol
even under his wide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his
arm. Besides, it had been discharged, and he had not had time to reload it. “No
matter, the dagger will do,” he said to himself, though when planning his design
he had more than once come to the conclusion that the chief mistake made by
the student in 1809 had been to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as his
chief aim consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving to himself that
he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he could to achieve it,
Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a green sheath which he had
bought at the Súkharev market with the pistol, and hid it under his waistcoat.
Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his head, Pierre
went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or meeting the captain,
and passed out into the street.
The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much indifference the
evening before, had greatly increased during the night. Moscow was on fire in
several places. The buildings in Carriage Row, across the river, in the Bazaar and
the Povarskóy, as well as the barges on the Moskvá River and the timber yards
by the Dorogomílov Bridge, were all ablaze.
Pierre’s way led through side streets to the Povarskóy and from there to the
church of St. Nicholas on the Arbát, where he had long before decided that the
deed should be done. The gates of most of the houses were locked and the
shutters up. The streets and lanes were deserted. The air was full of smoke and
the smell of burning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and timid
faces, and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walking in the
middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the French looked at Pierre with
surprise. Besides his height and stoutness, and the strange morose look of
suffering in his face and whole figure, the Russians stared at Pierre because they
could not make out to what class he could belong. The French followed him with
astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the other Russians
who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid no attention to them. At the
gate of one house three Frenchmen, who were explaining something to some
Russians who did not understand them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know
French.
Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel standing
beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the shout was threateningly
repeated and he heard the click of the man’s musket as he raised it did Pierre
understand that he had to pass on the other side of the street. He heard nothing
and saw nothing of what went on around him. He carried his resolution within
himself in terror and haste, like something dreadful and alien to him, for, after
the previous night’s experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was not
destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even had he not been
hindered by anything on the way, his intention could not now have been carried
out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbát more than four hours previously on his
way from the Dorogomílov suburb to the Krémlin, and was now sitting in a very
gloomy frame of mind in a royal study in the Krémlin, giving detailed and exact
orders as to measures to be taken immediately to extinguish the fire, to prevent
looting, and to reassure the inhabitants. But Pierre did not know this; he was
entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and was tortured—as those are who
obstinately undertake a task that is impossible for them not because of its
difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their natures—by the fear of
weakening at the decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.
Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by instinct
and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the Povarskóy.
As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser—he
even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame rose from
under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the streets and they were
more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that something unusual was happening
around him, did not realize that he was approaching the fire. As he was going
along a footpath across a wide-open space adjoining the Povarskóy on one side
and the gardens of Prince Gruzínski’s house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard
the desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if awakening
from a dream and lifted his head.
By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of household goods lay
in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and trunks. On the ground, beside the
trunks, sat a thin woman no longer young, with long, prominent upper teeth, and
wearing a black cloak and cap. This woman, swaying to and fro and muttering
something, was choking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in
dirty short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother with a look of
stupefaction on their pale frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy of about
seven, who wore an overcoat and an immense cap evidently not his own, was
crying in his old nurse’s arms. A dirty, barefooted maid was sitting on a trunk,
and, having undone her pale-colored plait, was pulling it straight and sniffing at
her singed hair. The woman’s husband, a short, round-shouldered man in the
undress uniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers and
showing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forward over his
temples, with expressionless face was moving the trunks, which were placed one
on another, and was dragging some garments from under them.
As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his feet.
“Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends... help us,
somebody,” she muttered between her sobs. “My girl... My daughter! My
youngest daughter is left behind. She’s burned! Ooh! Was it for this I nursed
you.... Ooh!”
“Don’t, Mary Nikoláevna!” said her husband to her in a low voice, evidently
only to justify himself before the stranger. “Sister must have taken her, or else
where can she be?” he added.
“Monster! Villain!” shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to weep.
“You have no heart, you don’t feel for your own child! Another man would have
rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and neither a man nor a father!
You, honored sir, are a noble man,” she went on, addressing Pierre rapidly
between her sobs. “The fire broke out alongside, and blew our way, the maid
called out ‘Fire!’ and we rushed to collect our things. We ran out just as we
were.... This is what we have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all
the rest is lost. We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O Lord!...” and again
she began to sob. “My child, my dear one! Burned, burned!”
“But where was she left?” asked Pierre.
From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man might
help her.
“Oh, dear sir!” she cried, seizing him by the legs. “My benefactor, set my
heart at ease.... Aníska, go, you horrid girl, show him the way!” she cried to the
maid, angrily opening her mouth and still farther exposing her long teeth.
“Show me the way, show me, I... I’ll do it,” gasped Pierre rapidly.
The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her plait, sighed,
and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre felt as if he had come back
to life after a heavy swoon. He held his head higher, his eyes shone with the light
of life, and with swift steps he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on
the Povarskóy. The whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues of
flame here and there broke through that cloud. A great number of people
crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of the street stood a French
general saying something to those around him. Pierre, accompanied by the maid,
was advancing to the spot where the general stood, but the French soldiers
stopped him.
“On ne passe pas!” * cried a voice.
* “You can’t pass!”
“This way, uncle,” cried the girl. “We’ll pass through the side street, by the
Nikúlins’!”
Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with her. She ran
across the street, turned down a side street to the left, and, passing three houses,
turned into a yard on the right.
“It’s here, close by,” said she and, running across the yard, opened a gate in a
wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small wooden wing of the
house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One of its sides had fallen in,
another was on fire, and bright flames issued from the openings of the windows
and from under the roof.
As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air and
involuntarily stopped.
“Which is it? Which is your house?” he asked.
“Ooh!” wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. “That’s it, that was our lodging.
You’ve burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my precious little missy! Ooh!”
lamented Aníska, who at the sight of the fire felt that she too must give
expression to her feelings.
Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he involuntarily
passed round in a curve and came upon the large house that was as yet burning
only at one end, just below the roof, and around which swarmed a crowd of
Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not realize what these men, who were dragging
something out, were about; but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant
with a blunt saber and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely
understood that looting was going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that
idea.
The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings, the whistle
and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the people, and the sight of the
swaying smoke, now gathering into thick black clouds and now soaring up with
glittering sparks, with here and there dense sheaves of flame (now red and now
like golden fish scales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke and
rapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effects of a
conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him because at the sight of the
fire he felt himself suddenly freed from the ideas that had weighed him down.
He felt young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other side of the
lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which was still standing, when
just above his head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking sound
and the ring of something heavy falling close beside him.
Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some Frenchmen
who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with metal articles. Other
French soldiers standing below went up to the drawer.
“What does this fellow want?” shouted one of them referring to Pierre.
“There’s a child in that house. Haven’t you seen a child?” cried Pierre.
“What’s he talking about? Get along!” said several voices, and one of the
soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take from them some of the
plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved threateningly toward him.
“A child?” shouted a Frenchman from above. “I did hear something squealing
in the garden. Perhaps it’s his brat that the fellow is looking for. After all, one
must be human, you know....”
“Where is it? Where?” said Pierre.
“There! There!” shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the garden
at the back of the house. “Wait a bit—I’m coming down.”
And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with a spot on
his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window on the ground floor,
and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with him into the garden.
“Hurry up, you others!” he called out to his comrades. “It’s getting hot.”
When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman pulled
Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space where a three-year-old
girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.
“There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!” said the Frenchman.
“Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you know!” and the
Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his comrades.
Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going to take her in his
arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly, scrofulous-looking child, unattractively
like her mother, began to yell and run away. Pierre, however, seized her and
lifted her in his arms. She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her
little hands to pull Pierre’s hands away and to bite them with her slobbering
mouth. Pierre was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he had
experienced when touching some nasty little animal. But he made an effort not
to throw the child down and ran with her to the large house. It was now,
however, impossible to get back the way he had come; the maid, Aníska, was no
longer there, and Pierre with a feeling of pity and disgust pressed the wet,
painfully sobbing child to himself as tenderly as he could and ran with her
through the garden seeking another way out.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back with his
little burden to the Gruzínski garden at the corner of the Povarskóy. He did not at
first recognize the place from which he had set out to look for the child, so
crowded was it now with people and goods that had been dragged out of the
houses. Besides Russian families who had taken refuge here from the fire with
their belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of clothing.
Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family of that civil servant
in order to restore the daughter to her mother and go to save someone else. Pierre
felt that he had still much to do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and
from running, he felt at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of youth,
animation, and determination that had come on him when he ran to save the
child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her little hands to Pierre’s
coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some little wild animal. He glanced at
her occasionally with a slight smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically
innocent in that frightened, sickly little face.
He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left them. He walked
among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various faces he met.
Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family consisting of a very
handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new, cloth-covered, sheepskin
coat and new boots, an old woman of similar type, and a young woman. That
very young woman seemed to Pierre the perfection of Oriental beauty, with her
sharply outlined, arched, black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright
color of her long, beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and
the crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright lilac shawl
on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out onto the snow. She was
sitting on some bundles a little behind the old woman, and looked from under
her long lashes with motionless, large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before
her. Evidently she was aware of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face
struck Pierre and, hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to look at
her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding those he sought, he
stopped and looked about him.
With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous than before,
and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered about him.
“Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You’re of the gentry yourself, aren’t
you? Whose child is it?” they asked him.
Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat who had
been sitting there with her other children, and he asked whether anyone knew
where she had gone.
“Why, that must be the Anférovs,” said an old deacon, addressing a
pockmarked peasant woman. “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!” he added in
his customary bass.
“The Anférovs? No,” said the woman. “They left in the morning. That must
be either Mary Nikoláevna’s or the Ivánovs’!”
“He says ‘a woman,’ and Mary Nikoláevna is a lady,” remarked a house serf.
“Do you know her? She’s thin, with long teeth,” said Pierre.
“That’s Mary Nikoláevna! They went inside the garden when these wolves
swooped down,” said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.
“O Lord, have mercy!” added the deacon.
“Go over that way, they’re there. It’s she! She kept on lamenting and crying,”
continued the woman. “It’s she. Here, this way!”
But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds been
intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was looking at the
Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone up to them. One of
these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat tied round the waist with a
rope. He had a nightcap on his head and his feet were bare. The other, whose
appearance particularly struck Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-
haired man, slow in his movements and with an idiotic expression of face. He
wore a woman’s loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian
boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the
Armenians and, saying something, immediately seized the old man by his legs
and the old man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in the frieze gown
stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and with his hands in his pockets
stood staring at her, motionless and silent.
“Here, take the child!” said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to the woman,
handing the little girl to her. “Give her back to them, give her back!” he almost
shouted, putting the child, who began screaming, on the ground, and again
looking at the Frenchman and the Armenian family.
The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had secured
his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other. The old man was
saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre caught but a glimpse of
this, his whole attention was directed to the Frenchman in the frieze gown who
meanwhile, swaying slowly from side to side, had drawn nearer to the young
woman and taking his hands from his pockets had seized her by the neck.
The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same attitude, with her
long lashes drooping as if she did not see or feel what the soldier was doing to
her.
While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the
Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing from her
neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the young woman,
clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.
“Let that woman alone!” exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious voice, seizing
the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him aside.
The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing down the
boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward Pierre.
“Voyons, pas de bêtises!” * he cried.
* “Look here, no nonsense!”
Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing and his
strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted Frenchman and, before
the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked him off his feet and hammered
him with his fists. Shouts of approval were heard from the crowd around, and at
the same moment a mounted patrol of French Uhlans appeared from round the
corner. The Uhlans came up at a trot to Pierre and the Frenchman and
surrounded them. Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He
only remembered beating someone and being beaten and finally feeling that his
hands were bound and that a crowd of French soldiers stood around him and
were searching him.
“Lieutenant, he has a dagger,” were the first words Pierre understood.
“Ah, a weapon?” said the officer and turned to the barefooted soldier who had
been arrested with Pierre. “All right, you can tell all about it at the court-
martial.” Then he turned to Pierre. “Do you speak French?”
Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply. His face
probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something in a whisper and
four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves on both sides of Pierre.
“Do you speak French?” the officer asked again, keeping at a distance from
Pierre. “Call the interpreter.”
A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks, and by his
clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to be a French salesman
from one of the Moscow shops.
“He does not look like a common man,” said the interpreter, after a searching
look at Pierre.
“Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary,” remarked the officer. “And ask
him who he is,” he added.
“Who are you?” asked the interpreter in poor Russian. “You must answer the
chief.”
“I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner—take me!” Pierre suddenly
replied in French.
“Ah, ah!” muttered the officer with a frown. “Well then, march!”
A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood the
pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol started she
moved forward.
“Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?” said she. “And the little girl,
the little girl, what am I to do with her if she’s not theirs?” said the woman.
“What does that woman want?” asked the officer.
Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight of the little girl
he had saved.
“What does she want?” he murmured. “She is bringing me my daughter whom
I have just saved from the flames,” said he. “Good-by!” And without knowing
how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along with resolute and
triumphant steps between the French soldiers.
The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various streets of
Moscow by Durosnel’s order to put a stop to the pillage, and especially to catch
the incendiaries who, according to the general opinion which had that day
originated among the higher French officers, were the cause of the
conflagrations. After marching through a number of streets the patrol arrested
five more Russian suspects: a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a
peasant, and a house serf, besides several looters. But of all these various
suspected characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all.
When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the Zúbov
Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed apart under
strict guard.
BOOK TWELVE: 1812
CHAPTER I
In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being carried on with
greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between the parties of Rumyántsev,
the French, Márya Fëdorovna, the Tsarévich, and others, drowned as usual by
the buzzing of the court drones. But the calm, luxurious life of Petersburg,
concerned only about phantoms and reflections of real life, went on in its old
way and made it hard, except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the
difficult position of the Russian people. There were the same receptions and
balls, the same French theater, the same court interests and service interests and
intrigues as usual. Only in the very highest circles were attempts made to keep in
mind the difficulties of the actual position. Stories were whispered of how
differently the two Empresses behaved in these difficult circumstances. The
Empress Márya, concerned for the welfare of the charitable and educational
institutions under her patronage, had given directions that they should all be
removed to Kazán, and the things belonging to these institutions had already
been packed up. The Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions
she would be pleased to give—with her characteristic Russian patriotism had
replied that she could give no directions about state institutions for that was the
affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally was concerned she would be
the last to quit Petersburg.
At Anna Pávlovna’s on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of the battle
of Borodinó, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which was to be the reading
of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when sending the Emperor an icon of
the Venerable Sergius. It was regarded as a model of ecclesiastical, patriotic
eloquence. Prince Vasíli himself, famed for his elocution, was to read it. (He
used to read at the Empress’.) The art of his reading was supposed to lie in
rolling out the words, quite independently of their meaning, in a loud and
singsong voice alternating between a despairing wail and a tender murmur, so
that the wail fell quite at random on one word and the murmur on another. This
reading, as was always the case at Anna Pávlovna’s soirees, had a political
significance. That evening she expected several important personages who had
to be made ashamed of their visits to the French theater and aroused to a
patriotic temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna Pávlovna,
not yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room, did not let the
reading begin but wound up the springs of a general conversation.
The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess Bezúkhova. She
had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously, had missed several gatherings
of which she was usually the ornament, and was said to be receiving no one, and
instead of the celebrated Petersburg doctors who usually attended her had
entrusted herself to some Italian doctor who was treating her in some new and
unusual way.
They all knew very well that the enchanting countess’ illness arose from an
inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at the same time, and that
the Italian’s cure consisted in removing such inconvenience; but in Anna
Pávlovna’s presence no one dared to think of this or even appear to know it.
“They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is angina pectoris.”
“Angina? Oh, that’s a terrible illness!”
“They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina...” and the word
angina was repeated with great satisfaction.
“The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the doctor told him
the case was dangerous.”
“Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman.”
“You are speaking of the poor countess?” said Anna Pávlovna, coming up just
then. “I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a little better. Oh, she is
certainly the most charming woman in the world,” she went on, with a smile at
her own enthusiasm. “We belong to different camps, but that does not prevent
my esteeming her as she deserves. She is very unfortunate!” added Anna
Pávlovna.
Supposing that by these words Anna Pávlovna was somewhat lifting the veil
from the secret of the countess’ malady, an unwary young man ventured to
express surprise that well-known doctors had not been called in and that the
countess was being attended by a charlatan who might employ dangerous
remedies.
“Your information may be better than mine,” Anna Pávlovna suddenly and
venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, “but I know on good
authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He is private physician
to the Queen of Spain.”
And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pávlovna turned to another
group where Bilíbin was talking about the Austrians: having wrinkled up his
face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again and utter one of his mots.
“I think it is delightful,” he said, referring to a diplomatic note that had been
sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners captured from the French by
Wittgenstein, “the hero of Petropol” as he was then called in Petersburg.
“What? What’s that?” asked Anna Pávlovna, securing silence for the mot,
which she had heard before.
And Bilíbin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch, which he
had himself composed.
“The Emperor returns these Austrian banners,” said Bilíbin, “friendly banners
gone astray and found on a wrong path,” and his brow became smooth again.
“Charming, charming!” observed Prince Vasíli.
“The path to Warsaw, perhaps,” Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly and
unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he meant. Prince
Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise. He knew no more than
the others what his words meant. During his diplomatic career he had more than
once noticed that such utterances were received as very witty, and at every
opportunity he uttered in that way the first words that entered his head. “It may
turn out very well,” he thought, “but if not, they’ll know how to arrange
matters.” And really, during the awkward silence that ensued, that insufficiently
patriotic person entered whom Anna Pávlovna had been waiting for and wished
to convert, and she, smiling and shaking a finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince
Vasíli to the table and bringing him two candles and the manuscript begged him
to begin. Everyone became silent.
“Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor!” Prince Vasíli sternly declaimed,
looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether anyone had anything to
say to the contrary. But no one said anything. “Moscow, our ancient capital, the
New Jerusalem, receives her Christ”—he placed a sudden emphasis on the word
her—“as a mother receives her zealous sons into her arms, and through the
gathering mists, foreseeing the brilliant glory of thy rule, sings in exultation,
‘Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh!’”
Prince Vasíli pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.
Bilíbin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present appeared
intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna Pávlovna whispered
the next words in advance, like an old woman muttering the prayer at
Communion: “Let the bold and insolent Goliath...” she whispered.
Prince Vasíli continued.
“Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France encompass the
realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble Faith, the sling of the
Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head in his bloodthirsty pride. This icon
of the Venerable Sergius, the servant of God and zealous champion of old of our
country’s weal, is offered to Your Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning
strength prevents rejoicing in the sight of your most gracious presence. I raise
fervent prayers to Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race of the just, and
mercifully fulfill the desires of Your Majesty.”
“What force! What a style!” was uttered in approval both of reader and of
author.
Animated by that address Anna Pávlovna’s guests talked for a long time of the
state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as to the result of the
battle to be fought in a few days.
“You will see,” said Anna Pávlovna, “that tomorrow, on the Emperor’s
birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!”
CHAPTER II
Anna Pávlovna’s presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day during the
service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor’s birthday, Prince
Volkónski was called out of the church and received a dispatch from Prince
Kutúzov. It was Kutúzov’s report, written from Tatárinova on the day of the
battle. Kutúzov wrote that the Russians had not retreated a step, that the French
losses were much heavier than ours, and that he was writing in haste from the
field of battle before collecting full information. It followed that there must have
been a victory. And at once, without leaving the church, thanks were rendered to
the Creator for His help and for the victory.
Anna Pávlovna’s presentiment was justified, and all that morning a joyously
festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the victory to have been
complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon’s having been captured, of his
deposition, and of the choice of a new ruler for France.
It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real strength and
completeness amid the conditions of court life and far from the scene of action.
General events involuntarily group themselves around some particular incident.
So now the courtiers’ pleasure was based as much on the fact that the news had
arrived on the Emperor’s birthday as on the fact of the victory itself. It was like a
successfully arranged surprise. Mention was made in Kutúzov’s report of the
Russian losses, among which figured the names of Túchkov, Bagratión, and
Kutáysov. In the Petersburg world this sad side of the affair again involuntarily
centered round a single incident: Kutáysov’s death. Everybody knew him, the
Emperor liked him, and he was young and interesting. That day everyone met
with the words:
“What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a loss
Kutáysov is! How sorry I am!”
“What did I tell about Kutúzov?” Prince Vasíli now said with a prophet’s
pride. “I always said he was the only man capable of defeating Napoleon.”
But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood grew
anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the suspense occasioned
the Emperor.
“Fancy the Emperor’s position!” said they, and instead of extolling Kutúzov
as they had done the day before, they condemned him as the cause of the
Emperor’s anxiety. That day Prince Vasíli no longer boasted of his protégé
Kutúzov, but remained silent when the commander in chief was mentioned.
Moreover, toward evening, as if everything conspired to make Petersburg society
anxious and uneasy, a terrible piece of news was added. Countess Hélène
Bezúkhova had suddenly died of that terrible malady it had been so agreeable to
mention. Officially, at large gatherings, everyone said that Countess Bezúkhova
had died of a terrible attack of angina pectoris, but in intimate circles details
were mentioned of how the private physician of the Queen of Spain had
prescribed small doses of a certain drug to produce a certain effect; but Hélène,
tortured by the fact that the old count suspected her and that her husband to
whom she had written (that wretched, profligate Pierre) had not replied, had
suddenly taken a very large dose of the drug, and had died in agony before
assistance could be rendered her. It was said that Prince Vasíli and the old count
had turned upon the Italian, but the latter had produced such letters from the
unfortunate deceased that they had immediately let the matter drop.
Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor’s lack of
news, the loss of Kutáysov, and the death of Hélène.
On the third day after Kutúzov’s report a country gentleman arrived from
Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French spread through the
whole town. This was terrible! What a position for the Emperor to be in!
Kutúzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasíli during the visits of condolence paid to
him on the occasion of his daughter’s death said of Kutúzov, whom he had
formerly praised (it was excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had
said), that it was impossible to expect anything else from a blind and depraved
old man.
“I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted to such a
man.”
As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt it, but the
next day the following communication was received from Count Rostopchín:
Prince Kutúzov’s adjutant has brought me a letter in which he demands police
officers to guide the army to the Ryazán road. He writes that he is regretfully
abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutúzov’s action decides the fate of the capital and of
your empire! Russia will shudder to learn of the abandonment of the city in
which her greatness is centered and in which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I
shall follow the army. I have had everything removed, and it only remains for me
to weep over the fate of my fatherland.
On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkónski to Kutúzov with
the following rescript:
Prince Michael Ilariónovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have received
no communication from you, yet on the first of September I received from the
commander in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslávl, the sad news that you, with the
army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You can yourself imagine the effect this
news has had on me, and your silence increases my astonishment. I am sending
this by Adjutant-General Prince Volkónski, to hear from you the situation of the
army and the reasons that have induced you to take this melancholy decision.
CHAPTER III
Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from Kutúzov
reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that event. This messenger
was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know Russian, but who was quoique
étranger, russe de cœur et d’âme, * as he said of himself.
* Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.
The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the palace on
Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before the campaign and
who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as he wrote) when he
appeared before notre très gracieux souverain * with the news of the burning of
Moscow, dont les flammes éclairaient sa route. *(2)
* Our most gracious sovereign.
Though the source of M. Michaud’s chagrin must have been different from
that which caused Russians to grieve, he had such a sad face when shown into
the Emperor’s study that the latter at once asked:
“Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?”
“Very sad, sire,” replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh. “The
abandonment of Moscow.”
“Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?” asked the
Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.
Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutúzov had entrusted to him,
which was that it had been impossible to fight before Moscow, and that as the
only remaining choice was between losing the army as well as Moscow, or
losing Moscow alone, the field marshal had to choose the latter.
The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.
“Has the enemy entered the city?” he asked.
“Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in flames,” replied
Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at the Emperor he was frightened by
what he had done.
The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his lower lip trembled, and
tears instantly appeared in his fine blue eyes.
But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as if blaming himself for
his weakness, and raising his head addressed Michaud in a firm voice:
“I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence requires great
sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself in all things to His will; but tell
me, Michaud, how did you leave the army when it saw my ancient capital
abandoned without a battle? Did you not notice discouragement?...”
Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more, Michaud also grew
calm, but was not immediately ready to reply to the Emperor’s direct and
relevant question which required a direct answer.
“Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal soldier?” he asked
to gain time.
“Colonel, I always require it,” replied the Emperor. “Conceal nothing from
me, I wish to know absolutely how things are.”
“Sire!” said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible smile on his lips,
having now prepared a well-phrased reply, “sire, I left the whole army, from its
chiefs to the lowest soldier, without exception in desperate and agonized
terror...”
“How is that?” the Emperor interrupted him, frowning sternly. “Would
misfortune make my Russians lose heart?... Never!”
Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase he had prepared.
“Sire,” he said, with respectful playfulness, “they are only afraid lest Your
Majesty, in the goodness of your heart, should allow yourself to be persuaded to
make peace. They are burning for the combat,” declared this representative of
the Russian nation, “and to prove to Your Majesty by the sacrifice of their lives
how devoted they are....”
“Ah!” said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly gleam in his eyes, he
patted Michaud on the shoulder. “You set me at ease, Colonel.”
He bent his head and was silent for some time.
“Well, then, go back to the army,” he said, drawing himself up to his full
height and addressing Michaud with a gracious and majestic gesture, “and tell
our brave men and all my good subjects wherever you go that when I have not a
soldier left I shall put myself at the head of my beloved nobility and my good
peasants and so use the last resources of my empire. It still offers me more than
my enemies suppose,” said the Emperor growing more and more animated; “but
should it ever be ordained by Divine Providence,” he continued, raising to
heaven his fine eyes shining with emotion, “that my dynasty should cease to
reign on the throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting all the means at my
command, I shall let my beard grow to here” (he pointed halfway down his
chest) “and go and eat potatoes with the meanest of my peasants, rather than sign
the disgrace of my country and of my beloved people whose sacrifices I know
how to appreciate.”
Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly turned
away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his eyes, and went to the
further end of his study. Having stood there a few moments, he strode back to
Michaud and pressed his arm below the elbow with a vigorous movement. The
Emperor’s mild and handsome face was flushed and his eyes gleamed with
resolution and anger.
“Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we may
recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I,” said the Emperor, touching his
breast. “We can no longer both reign together. I have learned to know him, and
he will not deceive me any more....”
And the Emperor paused, with a frown.
When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm resolution in the
Emperor’s eyes, Michaud—quoique étranger, russe de cœur et d’âme,—at that
solemn moment felt himself enraptured by all that he had heard (as he used
afterwards to say), and gave expression to his own feelings and those of the
Russian people whose representative he considered himself to be, in the
following words:
“Sire!” said he, “Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory of the
nation and the salvation of Europe!”
With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him.
CHAPTER IV
It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine that when half
Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were fleeing to distant provinces,
and one levy after another was being raised for the defense of the fatherland, all
Russians from the greatest to the least were solely engaged in sacrificing
themselves, saving their fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and
descriptions of that time without exception speak only of the self-sacrifice,
patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and the heroism of the Russians. But it was not
really so. It appears so to us because we see only the general historic interest of
that time and do not see all the personal human interests that people had. Yet in
reality those personal interests of the moment so much transcend the general
interests that they always prevent the public interest from being felt or even
noticed. Most of the people at that time paid no attention to the general progress
of events but were guided only by their private interests, and they were the very
people whose activities at that period were most useful.
Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to take part in
it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless members of society, they
saw everything upside down, and all they did for the common good turned out to
be useless and foolish—like Pierre’s and Mamónov’s regiments which looted
Russian villages, and the lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached
the wounded, and so on. Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing
their feelings, who discussed Russia’s position at the time involuntarily
introduced into their conversation either a shade of pretense and falsehood or
useless condemnation and anger directed against people accused of actions no
one could possibly be guilty of. In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of
the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only unconscious
action bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never understands
its significance. If he tries to realize it his efforts are fruitless.
The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place in Russia
the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg and in the provinces at a
distance from Moscow, ladies, and gentlemen in militia uniforms, wept for
Russia and its ancient capital and talked of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the
army which retired beyond Moscow there was little talk or thought of Moscow,
and when they caught sight of its burned ruins no one swore to be avenged on
the French, but they thought about their next pay, their next quarters, of
Matrëshka the vivandière, and like matters.
As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostóv took a close and
prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so casually, without any aim
at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked at what was going on in Russia without
despair and without dismally racking his brains over it. Had he been asked what
he thought of the state of Russia, he would have said that it was not his business
to think about it, that Kutúzov and others were there for that purpose, but that he
had heard that the regiments were to be made up to their full strength, that
fighting would probably go on for a long time yet, and that things being so it was
quite likely he might be in command of a regiment in a couple of years’ time.
As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being sent to
Vorónezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without regret at being
prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but with the greatest pleasure—
which he did not conceal and which his comrades fully understood.
A few days before the battle of Borodinó, Nicholas received the necessary
money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in advance, he set out
with post horses for Vorónezh.
Only a man who has experienced it—that is, has passed some months
continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war—can understand the
delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by the army’s
foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When—free from soldiers,
wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp—he saw villages with peasants and
peasant women, gentlemen’s country houses, fields where cattle were grazing,
posthouses with stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all
this for the first time. What for a long while specially surprised and delighted
him were the women, young and healthy, without a dozen officers making up to
each of them; women, too, who were pleased and flattered that a passing officer
should joke with them.
In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in Vorónezh, ordered
things he had long been deprived of in camp, and next day, very clean-shaven
and in a full-dress uniform he had not worn for a long time, went to present
himself to the authorities.
The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man who was
evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He received Nicholas
brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically military) and questioned him
with an important air, as if considering the general progress of affairs and
approving and disapproving with full right to do so. Nicholas was in such good
spirits that this merely amused him.
From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The governor
was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated the stud farms at
which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended to him a horse dealer in the
town and a landowner fourteen miles out of town who had the best horses, and
promised to assist him in every way.
“You are Count Ilyá Rostóv’s son? My wife was a great friend of your
mother’s. We are at home on Thursdays—today is Thursday, so please come and
see us quite informally,” said the governor, taking leave of him.
Immediately on leaving the governor’s, Nicholas hired post horses and, taking
his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop to the landowner,
fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything seemed to him pleasant and
easy during that first part of his stay in Vorónezh and, as usually happens when a
man is in a pleasant state of mind, everything went well and easily.
The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old cavalryman, a
horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some century-old brandy and some
old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery where he smoked, and who owned
some splendid horses.
In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six
thousand rubles—to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts. After dining
and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine, Nicholas—having exchanged
kisses with the landowner, with whom he was already on the friendliest terms—
galloped back over abominable roads, in the brightest frame of mind, continually
urging on the driver so as to be in time for the governor’s party.
When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented himself,
Nicholas arrived at the governor’s rather late, but with the phrase “better late
than never” on his lips.
It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew that
Catherine Petróvna would play valses and the écossaise on the clavichord and
that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come as to a ball.
Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this difference,
that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the arrival of many wealthy
families from Moscow, and as in everything that went on in Russia at that time a
special recklessness was noticeable, an “in for a penny, in for a pound—who
cares?” spirit, and the inevitable small talk, instead of turning on the weather and
mutual acquaintances, now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.
The society gathered together at the governor’s was the best in Vorónezh.
There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas’ Moscow
acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the cavalier of
St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured and well-bred Count
Rostóv. Among the men was an Italian prisoner, an officer of the French army;
and Nicholas felt that the presence of that prisoner enhanced his own importance
as a Russian hero. The Italian was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it
seemed to him that everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he
treated him cordially though with dignity and restraint.
As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing around him a
fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the words “better late than
never” and heard them repeated several times by others, people clustered around
him; all eyes turned on him, and he felt at once that he had entered into his
proper position in the province—that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant
position, and intoxicatingly so after his long privations. At posting stations, at
inns, and in the landowner’s snuggery, maidservants had been flattered by his
notice, and here too at the governor’s party there were (as it seemed to Nicholas)
an inexhaustible number of pretty young women, married and unmarried,
impatiently awaiting his notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from
the first day, the people concerned themselves to get this fine young daredevil of
an hussar married and settled down. Among these was the governor’s wife
herself, who welcomed Rostóv as a near relative and called him “Nicholas.”
Catherine Petróvna did actually play valses and the écossaise, and dancing
began in which Nicholas still further captivated the provincial society by his
agility. His particularly free manner of dancing even surprised them all. Nicholas
was himself rather surprised at the way he danced that evening. He had never
danced like that in Moscow and would even have considered such a very free
and easy manner improper and in bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him
to astonish them all by something unusual, something they would have to accept
as the regular thing in the capital though new to them in the provinces.
All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and pleasing
little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials. With the naïve
conviction of young men in a merry mood that other men’s wives were created
for them, Rostóv did not leave the lady’s side and treated her husband in a
friendly and conspiratorial style, as if, without speaking of it, they knew how
capitally Nicholas and the lady would get on together. The husband, however,
did not seem to share that conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostóv.
But the latter’s good-natured naïveté was so boundless that sometimes even he
involuntarily yielded to Nicholas’ good humor. Toward the end of the evening,
however, as the wife’s face grew more flushed and animated, the husband’s
became more and more melancholy and solemn, as though there were but a
given amount of animation between them and as the wife’s share increased the
husband’s diminished.
CHAPTER V
Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending closely over the
blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments with a smile that never
left his face. Jauntily shifting the position of his legs in their tight riding
breeches, diffusing an odor of perfume, and admiring his partner, himself, and
the fine outlines of his legs in their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the
blonde lady that he wished to run away with a certain lady here in Vorónezh.
“Which lady?”
“A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes” (Nicholas looked at his partner)
“are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure” (he glanced at her shoulders)
“like Diana’s....”
The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking about.
“Ah, Nikíta Iványch!” cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if wishing Nikíta
Iványch to share his joke, he began to tell him of his intention to elope with a
blonde lady.
The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor’s good-natured
wife came up with a look of disapproval.
“Anna Ignátyevna wants to see you, Nicholas,” said she, pronouncing the
name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna Ignátyevna was a very
important person. “Come, Nicholas! You know you let me call you so?”
“Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?”
“Anna Ignátyevna Malvíntseva. She has heard from her niece how you
rescued her.... Can you guess?”
“I rescued such a lot of them!” said Nicholas.
“Her niece, Princess Bolkónskaya. She is here in Vorónezh with her aunt.
Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?”
“Not a bit! Please don’t, Aunt!”
“Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!”
The governor’s wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady with a blue
headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with the most important
personages of the town. This was Malvíntseva, Princess Mary’s aunt on her
mother’s side, a rich, childless widow who always lived in Vorónezh. When
Rostóv approached her she was standing settling up for the game. She looked at
him and, screwing up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who had
won from her.
“Very pleased, mon cher,” she then said, holding out her hand to Nicholas.
“Pray come and see me.”
After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom Malvíntseva
had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas knew of Prince
Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the important old lady
dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation to come to see her.
Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the mention of
Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and even of fear, which he
himself did not understand.
When he had parted from Malvíntseva Nicholas wished to return to the
dancing, but the governor’s little wife placed her plump hand on his sleeve and,
saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to her sitting room, from
which those who were there immediately withdrew so as not to be in her way.
“Do you know, dear boy,” began the governor’s wife with a serious expression
on her kind little face, “that really would be the match for you: would you like
me to arrange it?”
“Whom do you mean, Aunt?” asked Nicholas.
“I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petróvna speaks of
Lily, but I say, no—the princess! Do you want me to do it? I am sure your
mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl she is, really! And she is not
at all so plain, either.”
“Not at all,” replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. “As befits a soldier,
Aunt, I don’t force myself on anyone or refuse anything,” he said before he had
time to consider what he was saying.
“Well then, remember, this is not a joke!”
“Of course not!”
“Yes, yes,” the governor’s wife said as if talking to herself. “But, my dear boy,
among other things you are too attentive to the other, the blonde. One is sorry for
the husband, really....”
“Oh no, we are good friends with him,” said Nicholas in the simplicity of his
heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so pleasant to himself might not be
pleasant to someone else.
“But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor’s wife!” thought
Nicholas suddenly at supper. “She will really begin to arrange a match... and
Sónya...?” And on taking leave of the governor’s wife, when she again smilingly
said to him, “Well then, remember!” he drew her aside.
“But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt...”
“What is it, my dear? Come, let’s sit down here,” said she.
Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate thoughts
(which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or his friend) to this
woman who was almost a stranger. When he afterwards recalled that impulse to
unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which had very important results for him,
it seemed to him—as it seems to everyone in such cases—that it was merely
some silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with other
trifling events, had immense consequences for him and for all his family.
“You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but the very
idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me.”
“Oh yes, I understand,” said the governor’s wife.
“But Princess Bolkónskaya—that’s another matter. I will tell you the truth. In
the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to her; and then, after I met her
under such circumstances—so strangely, the idea often occurred to me: ‘This is
fate.’ Especially if you remember that Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I
had never happened to meet her before, somehow it had always happened that
we did not meet. And as long as my sister Natásha was engaged to her brother it
was of course out of the question for me to think of marrying her. And it must
needs happen that I should meet her just when Natásha’s engagement had been
broken off... and then everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone and
never will, only to you.”
The governor’s wife pressed his elbow gratefully.
“You know Sónya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her, and will
do so.... So you see there can be no question about—” said Nicholas
incoherently and blushing.
“My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sónya has nothing and you
yourself say your Papa’s affairs are in a very bad way. And what about your
mother? It would kill her, that’s one thing. And what sort of life would it be for
Sónya—if she’s a girl with a heart? Your mother in despair, and you all ruined....
No, my dear, you and Sónya ought to understand that.”
Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments.
“All the same, Aunt, it is impossible,” he rejoined with a sigh, after a short
pause. “Besides, would the princess have me? And besides, she is now in
mourning. How can one think of it!”
“But you don’t suppose I’m going to get you married at once? There is always
a right way of doing things,” replied the governor’s wife.
“What a matchmaker you are, Aunt...” said Nicholas, kissing her plump little
hand.
CHAPTER VI
On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostóv, Princess Mary had found
her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince Andrew giving her
instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvíntseva at Vorónezh. That feeling akin
to temptation which had tormented her during her father’s illness, since his
death, and especially since her meeting with Rostóv was smothered by
arrangements for the journey, anxiety about her brother, settling in a new house,
meeting new people, and attending to her nephew’s education. She was sad.
Now, after a month passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more deeply
the loss of her father which was associated in her mind with the ruin of Russia.
She was agitated and incessantly tortured by the thought of the dangers to which
her brother, the only intimate person now remaining to her, was exposed. She
was worried too about her nephew’s education for which she had always felt
herself incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace—a peace
arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal dreams and hopes
that had been on the point of awakening within her and were related to her
meeting with Rostóv.
The day after her party the governor’s wife came to see Malvíntseva and, after
discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked that though under present
circumstances a formal betrothal was, of course, not to be thought of, all the
same the young people might be brought together and could get to know one
another. Malvíntseva expressed approval, and the governor’s wife began to
speak of Rostóv in Mary’s presence, praising him and telling how he had
blushed when Princess Mary’s name was mentioned. But Princess Mary
experienced a painful rather than a joyful feeling—her mental tranquillity was
destroyed, and desires, doubts, self-reproach, and hopes reawoke.
During the two days that elapsed before Rostóv called, Princess Mary
continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she decided not to
come to the drawing room when he called to see her aunt—that it would not be
proper for her, in her deep mourning, to receive visitors; then she thought this
would be rude after what he had done for her; then it occurred to her that her
aunt and the governor’s wife had intentions concerning herself and Rostóv—
their looks and words at times seemed to confirm this supposition—then she told
herself that only she, with her sinful nature, could think this of them: they could
not forget that situated as she was, while still wearing deep mourning, such
matchmaking would be an insult to her and to her father’s memory. Assuming
that she did go down to see him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would
say to her and what she would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed
undeservedly cold and then to mean too much. More than anything she feared
lest the confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as soon as she
saw him.
But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing room
that Count Rostóv had called, the princess showed no confusion, only a slight
blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new and radiant light.
“You have met him, Aunt?” said she in a calm voice, unable herself to
understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural.
When Rostóv entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an instant,
as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then just as Nicholas turned to
her she raised her head and met his look with shining eyes. With a movement
full of dignity and grace she half rose with a smile of pleasure, held out her
slender, delicate hand to him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first
time new deep womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in
the drawing room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise. Herself a
consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on meeting a man
she wished to attract.
“Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has greatly
improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what tact and grace!”
thought Mademoiselle Bourienne.
Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she would have
been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the change that had taken
place in herself. From the moment she recognized that dear, loved face, a new
life force took possession of her and compelled her to speak and act apart from
her own will. From the time Rostóv entered, her face became suddenly
transformed. It was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern
and the intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously seemed dark,
coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in unexpected and striking
beauty. For the first time all that pure, spiritual, inward travail through which she
had lived appeared on the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction with
herself, her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her meekness, love, and self-
sacrifice—all this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her delicate smile, and in
every trait of her gentle face.
Rostóv saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He felt that
the being before him was quite different from, and better than, anyone he had
met before, and above all better than himself.
Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of the war,
and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow about it; they
spoke of their last meeting—Nicholas trying to change the subject—they talked
of the governor’s kind wife, of Nicholas’ relations, and of Princess Mary’s.
She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as soon as her
aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of Russia’s misfortunes with
a certain artificiality, but her brother was too near her heart and she neither could
nor would speak lightly of him. Nicholas noticed this, as he noticed every shade
of Princess Mary’s character with an observation unusual to him, and everything
confirmed his conviction that she was a quite unusual and extraordinary being.
Nicholas blushed and was confused when people spoke to him about the princess
(as she did when he was mentioned) and even when he thought of her, but in her
presence he felt quite at ease, and said not at all what he had prepared, but what,
quite appropriately, occurred to him at the moment.
When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is usual when there
are children, turned to Prince Andrew’s little son, caressing him and asking
whether he would like to be an hussar. He took the boy on his knee, played with
him, and looked round at Princess Mary. With a softened, happy, timid look she
watched the boy she loved in the arms of the man she loved. Nicholas also
noticed that look and, as if understanding it, flushed with pleasure and began to
kiss the boy with good natured playfulness.
As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society, and
Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but all the same the
governor’s wife went on with her matchmaking, passing on to Nicholas the
flattering things Princess Mary said of him and vice versa, and insisting on his
declaring himself to Princess Mary. For this purpose she arranged a meeting
between the young people at the bishop’s house before Mass.
Though Rostóv told the governor’s wife that he would not make any
declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.
As at Tilsit Rostóv had not allowed himself to doubt that what everybody
considered right was right, so now, after a short but sincere struggle between his
effort to arrange his life by his own sense of justice, and in obedient submission
to circumstances, he chose the latter and yielded to the power he felt irresistibly
carrying him he knew not where. He knew that after his promise to Sónya it
would be what he deemed base to declare his feelings to Princess Mary. And he
knew that he would never act basely. But he also knew (or rather felt at the
bottom of his heart) that by resigning himself now to the force of circumstances
and to those who were guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but
was doing something very important—more important than anything he had ever
done in his life.
After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on externally
as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for him and he often
thought about her. But he never thought about her as he had thought of all the
young ladies without exception whom he had met in society, nor as he had for a
long time, and at one time rapturously, thought about Sónya. He had pictured
each of those young ladies as almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as
a possible wife, adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions of married
life: a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his wife’s carriage, little
ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to her, and so on—and these pictures of
the future had given him pleasure. But with Princess Mary, to whom they were
trying to get him engaged, he could never picture anything of future married life.
If he tried, his pictures seemed incongruous and false. It made him afraid.
CHAPTER VII
The dreadful news of the battle of Borodinó, of our losses in killed and
wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow reached
Vorónezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having learned of her
brother’s wound only from the Gazette and having no definite news of him,
prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her again himself) to set off in
search of Prince Andrew.
When he received the news of the battle of Borodinó and the abandonment of
Moscow, Rostóv was not seized with despair, anger, the desire for vengeance, or
any feeling of that kind, but everything in Vorónezh suddenly seemed to him dull
and tiresome, and he experienced an indefinite feeling of shame and
awkwardness. The conversations he heard seemed to him insincere; he did not
know how to judge all these affairs and felt that only in the regiment would
everything again become clear to him. He made haste to finish buying the
horses, and often became unreasonably angry with his servant and squadron
quartermaster.
A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which Nicholas was
present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian victory. He stood a little behind
the governor and held himself with military decorum through the service,
meditating on a great variety of subjects. When the service was over the
governor’s wife beckoned him to her.
“Have you seen the princess?” she asked, indicating with a movement of her
head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond the choir.
Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the profile he
saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude, timidity, and pity that
immediately overcame him. Princess Mary, evidently engrossed by her thoughts,
was crossing herself for the last time before leaving the church.
Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he had seen
before, there was the same general expression of refined, inner, spiritual labor,
but now it was quite differently lit up. There was a pathetic expression of sorrow,
prayer, and hope in it. As had occurred before when she was present, Nicholas
went up to her without waiting to be prompted by the governor’s wife and not
asking himself whether or not it was right and proper to address her here in
church, and told her he had heard of her trouble and sympathized with his whole
soul. As soon as she heard his voice a vivid glow kindled in her face, lighting up
both her sorrow and her joy.
“There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess,” said Rostóv. “It is that if
your brother, Prince Andrew Nikoláevich, were not living, it would have been at
once announced in the Gazette, as he is a colonel.”
The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but cheered by
the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.
“And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound” (the Gazette said it
was a shell) “either proving fatal at once or being very slight,” continued
Nicholas. “We must hope for the best, and I am sure...”
Princess Mary interrupted him.
“Oh, that would be so dread...” she began and, prevented by agitation from
finishing, she bent her head with a movement as graceful as everything she did
in his presence and, looking up at him gratefully, went out, following her aunt.
That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle some
accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that business it was
already too late to go anywhere but still too early to go to bed, and for a long
time he paced up and down the room, reflecting on his life, a thing he rarely did.
Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had met her
in Smolénsk province. His having encountered her in such exceptional
circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned her to him as a
good match, had drawn his particular attention to her. When he met her again in
Vorónezh the impression she made on him was not merely pleasing but
powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the peculiar moral beauty he observed in
her at this time. He was, however, preparing to go away and it had not entered
his head to regret that he was thus depriving himself of chances of meeting her.
But that day’s encounter in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than was desirable
for his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined face, that radiant look, those gentle
graceful gestures, and especially the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her
features agitated him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostóv could not bear to
see the expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not like Prince
Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy and dreaminess, but
in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed the depth of a whole spiritual
world foreign to him was an irresistible attraction.
“She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!” he said to himself. “Why am
I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sónya?” And he involuntarily
compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one and the abundance of it in
the other—a spirituality he himself lacked and therefore valued most highly. He
tried to picture what would happen were he free. How he would propose to her
and how she would become his wife. But no, he could not imagine that. He felt
awed, and no clear picture presented itself to his mind. He had long ago pictured
to himself a future with Sónya, and that was all clear and simple just because it
had all been thought out and he knew all there was in Sónya, but it was
impossible to picture a future with Princess Mary, because he did not understand
her but simply loved her.
Reveries about Sónya had had something merry and playful in them, but to
dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little frightening.
“How she prayed!” he thought. “It was plain that her whole soul was in her
prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains, and I am sure her prayer
will be answered. Why don’t I pray for what I want?” he suddenly thought.
“What do I want? To be free, released from Sónya... She was right,” he thought,
remembering what the governor’s wife had said: “Nothing but misfortune can
come of marrying Sónya. Muddles, grief for Mamma... business difficulties...
muddles, terrible muddles! Besides, I don’t love her—not as I should. O, God!
release me from this dreadful, inextricable position!” he suddenly began to pray.
“Yes, prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not pray as
Natásha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn into sugar—and then
run out into the yard to see whether it had done so. No, but I am not praying for
trifles now,” he thought as he put his pipe down in a corner, and folding his
hands placed himself before the icon. Softened by memories of Princess Mary he
began to pray as he had not done for a long time. Tears were in his eyes and in
his throat when the door opened and Lavrúshka came in with some papers.
“Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?” cried Nicholas,
quickly changing his attitude.
“From the governor,” said Lavrúshka in a sleepy voice. “A courier has arrived
and there’s a letter for you.”
“Well, all right, thanks. You can go!”
Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother and the other
from Sónya. He recognized them by the handwriting and opened Sónya’s first.
He had read only a few lines when he turned pale and his eyes opened wide with
fear and joy.
“No, it’s not possible!” he cried aloud.
Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter and
reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then again, and standing
still in the middle of the room he raised his shoulders, stretching out his hands,
with his mouth wide open and his eyes fixed. What he had just been praying for
with confidence that God would hear him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as
much astonished as if it were something extraordinary and unexpected, and as if
the very fact that it had happened so quickly proved that it had not come from
God to whom he had prayed, but by some ordinary coincidence.
This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary letter from
Sónya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from which there had
seemed no escape. She wrote that the last unfortunate events—the loss of almost
the whole of the Rostóvs’ Moscow property—and the countess’ repeatedly
expressed wish that Nicholas should marry Princess Bolkónskaya, together with
his silence and coldness of late, had all combined to make her decide to release
him from his promise and set him completely free.
It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of sorrow or
discord in the family that has been so good to me (she wrote), and my love has
no aim but the happiness of those I love; so, Nicholas, I beg you to consider
yourself free, and to be assured that, in spite of everything, no one can love you
more than does
Your Sónya
Both letters were written from Tróitsa. The other, from the countess, described
their last days in Moscow, their departure, the fire, and the destruction of all their
property. In this letter the countess also mentioned that Prince Andrew was
among the wounded traveling with them; his state was very critical, but the
doctor said there was now more hope. Sónya and Natásha were nursing him.
Next day Nicholas took his mother’s letter and went to see Princess Mary.
Neither he nor she said a word about what “Natásha nursing him” might mean,
but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly became almost as intimate with the
princess as if they were relations.
The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to Yaroslávl, and
a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.
CHAPTER VIII
Sónya’s letter written from Tróitsa, which had come as an answer to Nicholas’
prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting Nicholas married to an
heiress occupied the old countess’ mind more and more. She knew that Sónya
was the chief obstacle to this happening, and Sónya’s life in the countess’ house
had grown harder and harder, especially after they had received a letter from
Nicholas telling of his meeting with Princess Mary in Boguchárovo. The
countess let no occasion slip of making humiliating or cruel allusions to Sónya.
But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all that was
going on, she called Sónya to her and, instead of reproaching and making
demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself and repay all that the
family had done for her by breaking off her engagement with Nicholas.
“I shall not be at peace till you promise me this.”
Sónya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs that she would
do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave no actual promise and
could not bring herself to decide to do what was demanded of her. She must
sacrifice herself for the family that had reared and brought her up. To sacrifice
herself for others was Sónya’s habit. Her position in the house was such that
only by sacrifice could she show her worth, and she was accustomed to this and
loved doing it. But in all her former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily
conscious that they raised her in her own esteem and in that of others, and so
made her more worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more than anything in the
world. But now they wanted her to sacrifice the very thing that constituted the
whole reward for her self-sacrifice and the whole meaning of her life. And for
the first time she felt bitterness against those who had been her benefactors only
to torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of Natásha who had never
experienced anything of this sort, had never needed to sacrifice herself, but made
others sacrifice themselves for her and yet was beloved by everybody. And for
the first time Sónya felt that out of her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate
feeling was beginning to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue, or
religion. Under the influence of this feeling Sónya, whose life of dependence had
taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered the countess in vague
general terms, avoided talking with her and resolved to wait till she should see
Nicholas, not in order to set him free but on the contrary at that meeting to bind
him to her forever.
The bustle and terror of the Rostóvs’ last days in Moscow stifled the gloomy
thoughts that oppressed Sónya. She was glad to find escape from them in
practical activity. But when she heard of Prince Andrew’s presence in their
house, despite her sincere pity for him and for Natásha, she was seized by a
joyful and superstitious feeling that God did not intend her to be separated from
Nicholas. She knew that Natásha loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never
ceased to love him. She knew that being thrown together again under such
terrible circumstances they would again fall in love with one another, and that
Nicholas would then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would be within
the prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror of what had happened
during those last days and during the first days of their journey, this feeling that
Providence was intervening in her personal affairs cheered Sónya.
At the Tróitsa monastery the Rostóvs first broke their journey for a whole day.
Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry, one of
which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much better that
day and Natásha was sitting with him. In the next room sat the count and
countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was calling on them as old
acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery. Sónya was there too, tormented
by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew and Natásha were talking about. She
heard the sound of their voices through the door. That door opened and Natásha
came out, looking excited. Not noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and
was drawing back the wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sónya and
took her hand.
“Natásha, what are you about? Come here!” said the countess.
Natásha went up to the monk for his blessing, and he advised her to pray for
aid to God and His saint.
As soon as the prior withdrew, Natásha took her friend by the hand and went
with her into the unoccupied room.
“Sónya, will he live?” she asked. “Sónya, how happy I am, and how
unhappy!... Sónya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he lives! He
cannot... because... because... of...” and Natásha burst into tears.
“Yes! I knew it! Thank God!” murmured Sónya. “He will live.”
Sónya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter’s fear and grief and by
her own personal feelings which she shared with no one. Sobbing, she kissed
and comforted Natásha. “If only he lives!” she thought. Having wept, talked, and
wiped away their tears, the two friends went together to Prince Andrew’s door.
Natásha opened it cautiously and glanced into the room, Sónya standing beside
her at the half-open door.
Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale face was calm,
his eyes closed, and they could see his regular breathing.
“O, Natásha!” Sónya suddenly almost screamed, catching her companion’s
arm and stepping back from the door.
“What? What is it?” asked Natásha.
“It’s that, that...” said Sónya, with a white face and trembling lips.
Natásha softly closed the door and went with Sónya to the window, not yet
understanding what the latter was telling her.
“You remember,” said Sónya with a solemn and frightened expression. “You
remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at Otrádnoe at Christmas? Do
you remember what I saw?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Natásha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely recalling that
Sónya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom she had seen lying
down.
“You remember?” Sónya went on. “I saw it then and told everybody, you and
Dunyásha. I saw him lying on a bed,” said she, making a gesture with her hand
and a lifted finger at each detail, “and that he had his eyes closed and was
covered just with a pink quilt, and that his hands were folded,” she concluded,
convincing herself that the details she had just seen were exactly what she had
seen in the mirror.
She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first thing that came
into her head, but what she had invented then seemed to her now as real as any
other recollection. She not only remembered what she had then said—that he
turned to look at her and smiled and was covered with something red—but was
firmly convinced that she had then seen and said that he was covered with a pink
quilt and that his eyes were closed.
“Yes, yes, it really was pink!” cried Natásha, who now thought she too
remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most extraordinary
and mysterious part of the prediction.
“But what does it mean?” she added meditatively.
“Oh, I don’t know, it is all so strange,” replied Sónya, clutching at her head.
A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natásha went to him, but Sónya,
feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the window thinking about
the strangeness of what had occurred.
They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and the countess
was writing to her son.
“Sónya!” said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as her niece
passed, “Sónya, won’t you write to Nicholas?” She spoke in a soft, tremulous
voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her spectacles Sónya read all that
the countess meant to convey with these words. Those eyes expressed entreaty,
shame at having to ask, fear of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in
case of such refusal.
Sónya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.
“Yes, Mamma, I will write,” said she.
Sónya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred that day,
especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen of her vision. Now that
she knew that the renewal of Natásha’s relations with Prince Andrew would
prevent Nicholas from marrying Princess Mary, she was joyfully conscious of a
return of that self-sacrificing spirit in which she was accustomed to live and
loved to live. So with a joyful consciousness of performing a magnanimous deed
—interrupted several times by the tears that dimmed her velvety black eyes—
she wrote that touching letter the arrival of which had so amazed Nicholas.
CHAPTER IX
The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with hostility but
yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was taken. In their attitude
toward him could still be felt both uncertainty as to who he might be—perhaps a
very important person—and hostility as a result of their recent personal conflict
with him.
But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for the new
guard—both officers and men—he was not as interesting as he had been to his
captors; and in fact the guard of the second day did not recognize in this big,
stout man in a peasant coat the vigorous person who had fought so desperately
with the marauder and the convoy and had uttered those solemn words about
saving a child; they saw in him only No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested
and detained for some reason by order of the Higher Command. If they noticed
anything remarkable about Pierre, it was only his unabashed, meditative
concentration and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke French, which struck
them as surprisingly good. In spite of this he was placed that day with the other
arrested suspects, as the separate room he had occupied was required by an
officer.
All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class and,
recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more especially as he
spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them making fun of him.
That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably, among them)
were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was taken with the others
to a house where a French general with a white mustache sat with two colonels
and other Frenchmen with scarves on their arms. With the precision and
definiteness customary in addressing prisoners, and which is supposed to
preclude human frailty, Pierre like the others was questioned as to who he was,
where he had been, with what object, and so on.
These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the essence of the
matter aside, shut out the possibility of that essence’s being revealed, and were
designed only to form a channel through which the judges wished the answers of
the accused to flow so as to lead to the desired result, namely a conviction. As
soon as Pierre began to say anything that did not fit in with that aim, the channel
was removed and the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt, moreover, what the
accused always feel at their trial, perplexity as to why these questions were put
to him. He had a feeling that it was only out of condescension or a kind of
civility that this device of placing a channel was employed. He knew he was in
these men’s power, that only by force had they brought him there, that force
alone gave them the right to demand answers to their questions, and that the sole
object of that assembly was to inculpate him. And so, as they had the power and
wish to inculpate him, this expedient of an inquiry and trial seemed unnecessary.
It was evident that any answer would lead to conviction. When asked what he
was doing when he was arrested, Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner that he
was restoring to its parents a child he had saved from the flames. Why had he
fought the marauder? Pierre answered that he “was protecting a woman,” and
that “to protect a woman who was being insulted was the duty of every man;
that...” They interrupted him, for this was not to the point. Why was he in the
yard of a burning house where witnesses had seen him? He replied that he had
gone out to see what was happening in Moscow. Again they interrupted him:
they had not asked where he was going, but why he was found near the fire?
Who was he? they asked, repeating their first question, which he had declined to
answer. Again he replied that he could not answer it.
“Put that down, that’s bad... very bad,” sternly remarked the general with the
white mustache and red flushed face.
Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the countess and
that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly knowing how she did it,
she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in French in the same tone as those
that had been addressed to her, and asked: “How is he?”
“The doctor says that he is not in danger,” said the countess, but as she spoke
she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed a contradiction of her
words.
“Where is he? Can I see him—can I?” asked the princess.
“One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?” said the
countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with Dessalles. “There
will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh, what a lovely boy!”
The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sónya was
talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the boy, and the old
count came in and welcomed the princess. He had changed very much since
Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had been a brisk, cheerful, self-assured
old man; now he seemed a pitiful, bewildered person. While talking to Princess
Mary he continually looked round as if asking everyone whether he was doing
the right thing. After the destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out
of his accustomed groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own
significance and to feel that there was no longer a place for him in life.
In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible, and her
vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him they should be
trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her nephew, the princess noticed
all that was going on around her and felt the necessity of submitting, for a time,
to this new order of things which she had entered. She knew it to be necessary,
and though it was hard for her she was not vexed with these people.
“This is my niece,” said the count, introducing Sónya—“You don’t know her,
Princess?”
Princess Mary turned to Sónya and, trying to stifle the hostile feeling that
arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she felt oppressed by the fact that
the mood of everyone around her was so far from what was in her own heart.
“Where is he?” she asked again, addressing them all.
“He is downstairs. Natásha is with him,” answered Sónya, flushing. “We have
sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess.”
Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary’s eyes. She turned
away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to him, when light,
impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard at the door. The princess
looked round and saw Natásha coming in, almost running—that Natásha whom
she had liked so little at their meeting in Moscow long since.
But hardly had the princess looked at Natásha’s face before she realized that
here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a friend. She ran to meet
her, embraced her, and began to cry on her shoulder.
As soon as Natásha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew’s bed, heard of
Princess Mary’s arrival, she softly left his room and hastened to her with those
swift steps that had sounded buoyant to Princess Mary.
There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into the
drawing room—that of love—boundless love for him, for her, and for all that
was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for others, and passionate
desire to give herself entirely to helping them. It was plain that at that moment
there was in Natásha’s heart no thought of herself or of her own relations with
Prince Andrew.
Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at the first glance
at Natásha’s face, and wept on her shoulder with sorrowful pleasure.
“Come, come to him, Mary,” said Natásha, leading her into the other room.
Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to Natásha. She felt
that from her she would be able to understand and learn everything.
“How...” she began her question but stopped short.
She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words. Natásha’s face
and eyes would have to tell her all more clearly and profoundly.
Natásha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to say all
she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous eyes which
penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was impossible not to tell the
whole truth which she saw. And suddenly, Natásha’s lips twitched, ugly wrinkles
gathered round her mouth, and covering her face with her hands she burst into
sobs.
Princess Mary understood.
But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust:
“But how is his wound? What is his general condition?”
“You, you... will see,” was all Natásha could say.
They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had left off crying and
were able to go to him with calm faces.
“How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse? When did
this happen?” Princess Mary inquired.
Natásha told her that at first there had been danger from his feverish condition
and the pain he suffered, but at Tróitsa that had passed and the doctor had only
been afraid of gangrene. That danger had also passed. When they reached
Yaroslávl the wound had begun to fester (Natásha knew all about such things as
festering) and the doctor had said that the festering might take a normal course.
Then fever set in, but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.
“But two days ago this suddenly happened,” said Natásha, struggling with her
sobs. “I don’t know why, but you will see what he is like.”
“Is he weaker? Thinner?” asked the princess.
“No, it’s not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too good, he cannot,
cannot live, because...”
CHAPTER XV
When Natásha opened Prince Andrew’s door with a familiar movement and
let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt the sobs in her
throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself, and now tried to remain tranquil,
she knew that she would be unable to look at him without tears.
The princess understood what Natásha had meant by the words: “two days ago
this suddenly happened.” She understood those words to mean that he had
suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness were signs of
approaching death. As she stepped to the door she already saw in imagination
Andrew’s face as she remembered it in childhood, a gentle, mild, sympathetic
face which he had rarely shown, and which therefore affected her very strongly.
She was sure he would speak soft, tender words to her such as her father had
uttered before his death, and that she would not be able to bear it and would
burst into sobs in his presence. Yet sooner or later it had to be, and she went in.
The sobs rose higher and higher in her throat as she more and more clearly
distinguished his form and her shortsighted eyes tried to make out his features,
and then she saw his face and met his gaze.
He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan, surrounded by
pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin, translucently white hand he held a
handkerchief, while with the other he stroked the delicate mustache he had
grown, moving his fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them as they entered.
On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary’s pace suddenly
slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She suddenly felt guilty
and grew timid on catching the expression of his face and eyes.
“But in what am I to blame?” she asked herself. And his cold, stern look
replied: “Because you are alive and thinking of the living, while I...”
In the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but inwards there was an
almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded his sister and Natásha.
He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.
“How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?” said he in a voice as
calm and aloof as his look.
Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such horror into
Princess Mary’s heart as the tone of his voice.
“And have you brought little Nicholas?” he asked in the same slow, quiet
manner and with an obvious effort to remember.
“How are you now?” said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she was
saying.
“That, my dear, you must ask the doctor,” he replied, and again making an
evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips only (his words clearly did
not correspond to his thoughts):
“Merci, chère amie, d’être venue.” *
* “Thank you for coming, my dear.”
Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just
perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She now
understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words, his tone,
and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look could be felt an
estrangement from everything belonging to this world, terrible in one who is
alive. Evidently only with an effort did he understand anything living; but it was
obvious that he failed to understand, not because he lacked the power to do so
but because he understood something else—something the living did not and
could not understand—and which wholly occupied his mind.
“There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together,” said he, breaking
the silence and pointing to Natásha. “She looks after me all the time.”
Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such a
thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say that, before her
whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to live he could not have
said those words in that offensively cold tone. If he had not known that he was
dying, how could he have failed to pity her and how could he speak like that in
her presence? The only explanation was that he was indifferent, because
something else, much more important, had been revealed to him.
The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke off.
“Mary came by way of Ryazán,” said Natásha.
Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and only after
calling her so in his presence did Natásha notice it herself.
“Really?” he asked.
“They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that...”
Natásha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was making an
effort to listen, but could not do so.
“Yes, they say it’s burned,” he said. “It’s a great pity,” and he gazed straight
before him, absently stroking his mustache with his fingers.
“And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?” Prince Andrew suddenly said,
evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. “He wrote here that he took a
great liking to you,” he went on simply and calmly, evidently unable to
understand all the complex significance his words had for living people. “If you
liked him too, it would be a good thing for you to get married,” he added rather
more quickly, as if pleased at having found words he had long been seeking.
Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her, except as a
proof of how far away he now was from everything living.
“Why talk of me?” she said quietly and glanced at Natásha.
Natásha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were again silent.
“Andrew, would you like...” Princess Mary suddenly said in a trembling
voice, “would you like to see little Nicholas? He is always talking about you!”
Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first time, but Princess
Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he did not smile with
pleasure or affection for his son, but with quiet, gentle irony because he thought
she was trying what she believed to be the last means of arousing him.
“Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?”
When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew’s room he looked at his
father with frightened eyes, but did not cry, because no one else was crying.
Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know what to say to him.
When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again went up to her
brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain her tears any longer began to cry.
He looked at her attentively.
“Is it about Nicholas?” he asked.
Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.
“Mary, you know the Gosp...” but he broke off.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. You mustn’t cry here,” he said, looking at her with the same cold
expression.
When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that she was crying at the
thought that little Nicholas would be left without a father. With a great effort he
tried to return to life and to see things from their point of view.
“Yes, to them it must seem sad!” he thought. “But how simple it is.
“The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father feedeth
them,” he said to himself and wished to say to Princess Mary; “but no, they will
take it their own way, they won’t understand! They can’t understand that all
those feelings they prize so—all our feelings, all those ideas that seem so
important to us, are unnecessary. We cannot understand one another,” and he
remained silent.
Prince Andrew’s little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and knew
nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining knowledge,
observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the faculties he afterwards
acquired, he could not have had a better or more profound understanding of the
meaning of the scene he had witnessed between his father, Mary, and Natásha,
than he had then. He understood it completely, and, leaving the room without
crying, went silently up to Natásha who had come out with him and looked shyly
at her with his beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy upper lip
trembled and leaning his head against her he began to cry.
After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him and either
sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natásha of whom he seemed
even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them quietly and shyly.
When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood what
Natásha’s face had told her. She did not speak any more to Natásha of hopes of
saving his life. She took turns with her beside his sofa, and did not cry any more,
but prayed continually, turning in soul to that Eternal and Unfathomable, whose
presence above the dying man was now so evident.
CHAPTER XVI
Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he felt that he was dying
and was already half dead. He was conscious of an aloofness from everything
earthly and a strange and joyous lightness of existence. Without haste or
agitation he awaited what was coming. That inexorable, eternal, distant, and
unknown the presence of which he had felt continually all his life—was now
near to him and, by the strange lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible
and palpable....
Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that terribly
tormenting fear of death—the end—but now he no longer understood that fear.
He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top before him, and
he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the sky, and knew that he was face
to face with death. When he came to himself after being wounded and the flower
of eternal, unfettered love had instantly unfolded itself in his soul as if freed
from the bondage of life that had restrained it, he no longer feared death and
ceased to think about it.
During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he spent after he
was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new principle of eternal
love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously detached himself from earthly
life. To love everything and everybody and always to sacrifice oneself for love
meant not to love anyone, not to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he
became with that principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more
completely he destroyed that dreadful barrier which—in the absence of such
love—stands between life and death. When during those first days he
remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: “Well, what of it? So
much the better!”
But after the night in Mytíshchi when, half delirious, he had seen her for
whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her hand to his lips, had
shed gentle, happy tears, love for a particular woman again crept unobserved
into his heart and once more bound him to life. And joyful and agitating
thoughts began to occupy his mind. Recalling the moment at the ambulance
station when he had seen Kurágin, he could not now regain the feeling he then
had, but was tormented by the question whether Kurágin was alive. And he
dared not inquire.
His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natásha referred to
when she said: “This suddenly happened,” had occurred two days before
Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual struggle between life and death, in
which death gained the victory. It was the unexpected realization of the fact that
he still valued life as presented to him in the form of his love for Natásha, and a
last, though ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.
It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish, and his thoughts
were preternaturally clear. Sónya was sitting by the table. He began to doze.
Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized him.
“Ah, she has come!” thought he.
And so it was: in Sónya’s place sat Natásha who had just come in noiselessly.
Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced this
physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an armchair placed
sideways, screening the light of the candle from him, and was knitting a
stocking. She had learned to knit stockings since Prince Andrew had casually
mentioned that no one nursed the sick so well as old nurses who knit stockings,
and that there is something soothing in the knitting of stockings. The needles
clicked lightly in her slender, rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see the
thoughtful profile of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball rolled off her
knees. She started, glanced round at him, and screening the candle with her hand
stooped carefully with a supple and exact movement, picked up the ball, and
regained her former position.
He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a deep
breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed cautiously.
At the Tróitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had told her that
if he lived he would always thank God for his wound which had brought them
together again, but after that they never spoke of the future.
“Can it or can it not be?” he now thought as he looked at her and listened to
the light click of the steel needles. “Can fate have brought me to her so strangely
only for me to die?... Is it possible that the truth of life has been revealed to me
only to show me that I have spent my life in falsity? I love her more than
anything in the world! But what am I to do if I love her?” he thought, and he
involuntarily groaned, from a habit acquired during his sufferings.
On hearing that sound Natásha put down the stocking, leaned nearer to him,
and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to him and bent over
him.
“You are not asleep?”
“No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in. No one else
gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do... that light. I want to weep for
joy.”
Natásha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.
“Natásha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world.”
“And I!”—She turned away for an instant. “Why too much?” she asked.
“Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your soul, your
whole soul—shall I live? What do you think?”
“I am sure of it, sure!” Natásha almost shouted, taking hold of both his hands
with a passionate movement.
He remained silent awhile.
“How good it would be!” and taking her hand he kissed it.
Natásha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this would not
do and that he had to be quiet.
“But you have not slept,” she said, repressing her joy. “Try to sleep... please!”
He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle and sat
down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked at him, and her
eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on her stocking and resolved
not to turn round till it was finished.
Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep long and
suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold perspiration.
As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now always
occupied his mind—about life and death, and chiefly about death. He felt
himself nearer to it.
“Love? What is love?” he thought.
“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I
understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I
love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a
particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.” These thoughts
seemed to him comforting. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking
in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun.
And there was the former agitation and obscurity. He fell asleep.
He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but that he was
quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and insignificant people
appeared before him. He talked to them and discussed something trivial. They
were preparing to go away somewhere. Prince Andrew dimly realized that all
this was trivial and that he had more important cares, but he continued to speak,
surprising them by empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons
began to disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded all
else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything depended on
whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, and tried to hurry, but his
legs refused to move and he knew he would not be in time to lock the door
though he painfully strained all his powers. He was seized by an agonizing fear.
And that fear was the fear of death. It stood behind the door. But just when he
was clumsily creeping toward the door, that dreadful something on the other side
was already pressing against it and forcing its way in. Something not human—
death—was breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the
door, making a final effort to hold it back—to lock it was no longer possible—
but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by that
terror, opened and closed again.
Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts were vain and
both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was death, and
Prince Andrew died.
But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was asleep, and
at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he awoke.
“Yes, it was death! I died—and woke up. Yes, death is an awakening!” And all
at once it grew light in his soul and the veil that had till then concealed the
unknown was lifted from his spiritual vision. He felt as if powers till then
confined within him had been liberated, and that strange lightness did not again
leave him.
When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan, Natásha went up
and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer and looked at her
strangely, not understanding.
That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary’s arrival.
From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting fever assumed a malignant
character, but what the doctor said did not interest Natásha, she saw the terrible
moral symptoms which to her were more convincing.
From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew together with
his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration of life it did not seem
to him slower than an awakening from sleep compared to the duration of a
dream.
There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow awakening.
His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both Princess
Mary and Natásha, who did not leave him, felt this. They did not weep or
shudder and during these last days they themselves felt that they were not
attending on him (he was no longer there, he had left them) but on what
reminded them most closely of him—his body. Both felt this so strongly that the
outward and terrible side of death did not affect them and they did not feel it
necessary to foment their grief. Neither in his presence nor out of it did they
weep, nor did they ever talk to one another about him. They felt that they could
not express in words what they understood.
They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and deeper,
away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so and that it was right.
He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of him.
When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the boy’s and turned
away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess Mary and Natásha understood
that) but simply because he thought it was all that was required of him, but when
they told him to bless the boy, he did what was demanded and looked round as if
asking whether there was anything else he should do.
When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving, occurred,
Princess Mary and Natásha were present.
“Is it over?” said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes lain
motionless, growing cold before them. Natásha went up, looked at the dead eyes,
and hastened to close them. She closed them but did not kiss them, but clung to
that which reminded her most nearly of him—his body.
“Where has he gone? Where is he now?...”
When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table, everyone
came to take leave of him and they all wept.
Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful perplexity. The
countess and Sónya cried from pity for Natásha and because he was no more.
The old count cried because he felt that before long, he, too, must take the same
terrible step.
Natásha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their own
personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion which had taken
possession of their souls at the consciousness of the simple and solemn mystery
of death that had been accomplished in their presence.
BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812
CHAPTER I
Man’s mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the
desire to find those causes is implanted in man’s soul. And without considering
the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken
separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a
cause that seems to him intelligible and says: “This is the cause!” In historical
events (where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first and
most primitive approximation to present itself was the will of the gods and, after
that, the will of those who stood in the most prominent position—the heroes of
history. But we need only penetrate to the essence of any historic event—which
lies in the activity of the general mass of men who take part in it—to be
convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the actions of the
mass but is itself continually controlled. It may seem to be a matter of
indifference whether we understand the meaning of historical events this way or
that; yet there is the same difference between a man who says that the people of
the West moved on the East because Napoleon wished it and a man who says
that this happened because it had to happen, as there is between those who
declared that the earth was stationary and that the planets moved round it and
those who admitted that they did not know what upheld the earth, but knew there
were laws directing its movement and that of the other planets. There is, and can
be, no cause of an historical event except the one cause of all causes. But there
are laws directing events, and some of these laws are known to us while we are
conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of these laws is only
possible when we have quite abandoned the attempt to find the cause in the will
of some one man, just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets
was possible only when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the earth.
The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodinó and the occupation
of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the most important episode
of the war of 1812 was the movement of the Russian army from the Ryazána to
the Kalúga road and to the Tarútino camp—the so-called flank march across the
Krásnaya Pakhrá River. They ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to
different men and dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians,
including the French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders when
they speak of that flank march. But it is hard to understand why military writers,
and following them others, consider this flank march to be the profound
conception of some one man who saved Russia and destroyed Napoleon. In the
first place it is hard to understand where the profundity and genius of this
movement lay, for not much mental effort was needed to see that the best
position for an army when it is not being attacked is where there are most
provisions; and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best
position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on the Kalúga
road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning the historians reach the
conclusion that this maneuver was a profound one. And it is even more difficult
to understand just why they think that this maneuver was calculated to save
Russia and destroy the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded,
accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might have proved ruinous to
the Russians and salutary for the French. If the position of the Russian army
really began to improve from the time of that march, it does not at all follow that
the march was the cause of it.
That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to the
Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its destruction. What
would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If Murat had not lost sight
of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained inactive? If the Russian army at
Krásnaya Pakhrá had given battle as Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What
would have happened had the French attacked the Russians while they were
marching beyond the Pakhrá? What would have happened if on approaching
Tarútino, Napoleon had attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he
had shown when he attacked them at Smolénsk? What would have happened had
the French moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank march
that brought salvation might have proved disastrous.
The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying history
deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be attributed to any one
man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in reality, like the retreat from Filí, it
did not suggest itself to anyone in its entirety, but resulted—moment by moment,
step by step, event by event—from an endless number of most diverse
circumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it had been accomplished
and belonged to the past.
At the council at Filí the prevailing thought in the minds of the Russian
commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely, a direct retreat by
the Nízhni road. In proof of this there is the fact that the majority of the council
voted for such a retreat, and above all there is the well-known conversation after
the council, between the commander in chief and Lanskóy, who was in charge of
the commissariat department. Lanskóy informed the commander in chief that the
army supplies were for the most part stored along the Oká in the Túla and
Ryazán provinces, and that if they retreated on Nízhni the army would be
separated from its supplies by the broad river Oká, which cannot be crossed
early in winter. This was the first indication of the necessity of deviating from
what had previously seemed the most natural course—a direct retreat on Nízhni-
Nóvgorod. The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazán road and nearer
to its supplies. Subsequently the inactivity of the French (who even lost sight of
the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenal at Túla, and especially
the advantages of drawing nearer to its supplies caused the army to turn still
further south to the Túla road. Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the
Túla road beyond the Pakhrá, the Russian commanders intended to remain at
Podólsk and had no thought of the Tarútino position; but innumerable
circumstances and the reappearance of French troops who had for a time lost
touch with the Russians, and projects of giving battle, and above all the
abundance of provisions in Kalúga province, obliged our army to turn still more
to the south and to cross from the Túla to the Kalúga road and go to Tarútino,
which was between the roads along which those supplies lay. Just as it is
impossible to say when it was decided to abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to
say precisely when, or by whom, it was decided to move to Tarútino. Only when
the army had got there, as the result of innumerable and varying forces, did
people begin to assure themselves that they had desired this movement and long
ago foreseen its result.
CHAPTER II
The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the advance of the
French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been continually retreating
straight back from the invaders, deviated from that direct course and, not finding
itself pursued, was naturally drawn toward the district where supplies were
abundant.
If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading the
Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could not have done
anything but make a return movement toward Moscow, describing an arc in the
direction where most provisions were to be found and where the country was
richest.
That movement from the Nízhni to the Ryazán, Túla, and Kalúga roads was so
natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that direction, and demands
were sent from Petersburg for Kutúzov to take his army that way. At Tarútino
Kutúzov received what was almost a reprimand from the Emperor for having
moved his army along the Ryazán road, and the Emperor’s letter indicated to
him the very position he had already occupied near Kalúga.
Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by the whole
campaign and by the battle of Borodinó, the Russian army—when the strength
of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push was received—assumed the
position natural to it.
Kutúzov’s merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as it is called,
but in the fact that he alone understood the significance of what had happened.
He alone then understood the meaning of the French army’s inactivity, he alone
continued to assert that the battle of Borodinó had been a victory, he alone—who
as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to attack—
employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian army from useless
engagements.
The beast wounded at Borodinó was lying where the fleeing hunter had left
him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and merely lying low,
the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was heard to moan.
The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed its
calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutúzov’s camp with
overtures for peace.
Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head was right,
wrote to Kutúzov the first words that occurred to him, though they were
meaningless.
But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation of the forces had
already made itself felt in Petersburg, was dispatched, Kutúzov had found
himself unable any longer to restrain the army he commanded from attacking
and a battle had taken place.
On the second of October a Cossack, Shapoválov, who was out scouting,
killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded hare he made his
way far into the forest and came upon the left flank of Murat’s army, encamped
there without any precautions. The Cossack laughingly told his comrades how he
had almost fallen into the hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story,
informed his commander.
The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished to take
advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of the superior officers,
who was acquainted with the higher authorities, reported the incident to a
general on the staff. The state of things on the staff had of late been exceedingly
strained. Ermólov had been to see Bennigsen a few days previously and had
entreated him to use his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to
take the offensive.
“If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you are asking
for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure to do the opposite,”
replied Bennigsen.
The Cossack’s report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent out, was the
final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled spring was released, the
clock began to whirr and the chimes to play. Despite all his supposed power, his
intellect, his experience, and his knowledge of men, Kutúzov—having taken into
consideration the Cossack’s report, a note from Bennigsen who sent personal
reports to the Emperor, the wishes he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the fact
that all the generals expressed the same wish—could no longer check the
inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he regarded as useless and
harmful—gave his approval, that is, to the accomplished fact.
CHAPTER IV
Bennigsen’s note and the Cossack’s information that the left flank of the
French was unguarded were merely final indications that it was necessary to
order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of October.
On the morning of the fourth of October Kutúzov signed the dispositions. Toll
read them to Ermólov, asking him to attend to the further arrangements.
“All right—all right. I haven’t time just now,” replied Ermólov, and left the
hut.
The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the Austerlitz
dispositions, it was written—though not in German this time:
“The First Column will march here and here,” “the Second Column will
march there and there,” and so on; and on paper, all these columns arrived at
their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy. Everything had been
admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions, and as is always the case, not a
single column reached its place at the appointed time.
When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been prepared,
an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to Ermólov to deal with. A
young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutúzov’s orderly, pleased at the importance
of the mission entrusted to him, went to Ermólov’s quarters.
“Gone away,” said Ermólov’s orderly.
The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom Ermólov was
often to be found.
“No, and the general’s out too.”
The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.
“No, he’s gone out.”
“If only they don’t make me responsible for this delay! What a nuisance it is!”
thought the officer, and he rode round the whole camp. One man said he had
seen Ermólov ride past with some other generals, others said he must have
returned home. The officer searched till six o’clock in the evening without even
stopping to eat. Ermólov was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he
was. The officer snatched a little food at a comrade’s, and rode again to the
vanguard to find Milorádovich. Milorádovich too was away, but here he was told
that he had gone to a ball at General Kíkin’s and that Ermólov was probably
there too.
“But where is it?”
“Why, there, over at Échkino,” said a Cossack officer, pointing to a country
house in the far distance.
“What, outside our line?”
“They’ve put two regiments as outposts, and they’re having such a spree
there, it’s awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!”
The officer rode out beyond our lines to Échkino. While still at a distance he
heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier’s dance song proceeding from the
house.
“In the meadows... in the meadows!” he heard, accompanied by whistling and
the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by shouts. These sounds
made his spirits rise, but at the same time he was afraid that he would be blamed
for not having executed sooner the important order entrusted to him. It was
already past eight o’clock. He dismounted and went up into the porch of a large
country house which had remained intact between the Russian and French
forces. In the refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling about with
wine and viands. Groups of singers stood outside the windows. The officer was
admitted and immediately saw all the chief generals of the army together, and
among them Ermólov’s big imposing figure. They all had their coats unbuttoned
and were standing in a semicircle with flushed and animated faces, laughing
loudly. In the middle of the room a short handsome general with a red face was
dancing the trepák with much spirit and agility.
“Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Iványch! Ha, ha, ha!”
The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a moment he
was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait; but one of the
generals espied him and, hearing what he had come about, informed Ermólov.
Ermólov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what the officer
had to say, took the papers from him without a word.
“You think he went off just by chance?” said a comrade, who was on the staff
that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards, referring to Ermólov. “It was a
trick. It was done on purpose to get Konovnítsyn into trouble. You’ll see what a
mess there’ll be tomorrow.”
CHAPTER V
Next day the decrepit Kutúzov, having given orders to be called early, said his
prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant consciousness of having to direct a
battle he did not approve of, got into his calèche and drove from Letashóvka (a
village three and a half miles from Tarútino) to the place where the attacking
columns were to meet. He sat in the calèche, dozing and waking up by turns, and
listening for any sound of firing on the right as an indication that the action had
begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn morning was just dawning.
On approaching Tarútino Kutúzov noticed cavalrymen leading their horses to
water across the road along which he was driving. Kutúzov looked at them
searchingly, stopped his carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged to.
They belonged to a column that should have been far in front and in ambush
long before then. “It may be a mistake,” thought the old commander in chief.
But a little further on he saw infantry regiments with their arms piled and the
soldiers, only partly dressed, eating their rye porridge and carrying fuel. He sent
for an officer. The officer reported that no order to advance had been received.
“How! Not rec...” Kutúzov began, but checked himself immediately and sent
for a senior officer. Getting out of his calèche, he waited with drooping head and
breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down. When Eýkhen, the officer of the
general staff whom he had summoned, appeared, Kutúzov went purple in the
face, not because that officer was to blame for the mistake, but because he was
an object of sufficient importance for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and
panting the old man fell into that state of fury in which he sometimes used to roll
on the ground, and he fell upon Eýkhen, threatening him with his hands,
shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another man, Captain Brózin, who
happened to turn up and who was not at all to blame, suffered the same fate.
“What sort of another blackguard are you? I’ll have you shot! Scoundrels!”
yelled Kutúzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and reeling.
He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene Highness
who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever had in Russia, to
be placed in this position—made the laughingstock of the whole army! “I
needn’t have been in such a hurry to pray about today, or have kept awake
thinking everything over all night,” thought he to himself. “When I was a chit of
an officer no one would have dared to mock me so... and now!” He was in a state
of physical suffering as if from corporal punishment, and could not avoid
expressing it by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon began to fail
him, and looking about him, conscious of having said much that was amiss, he
again got into his calèche and drove back in silence.
His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he listened to
excuses and self-justifications (Ermólov did not come to see him till the next
day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnítsyn, and Toll that the
movement that had miscarried should be executed next day. And once more
Kutúzov had to consent.
CHAPTER VI
Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the evening and
advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with dark purple clouds, but
no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy, and the troops advanced
noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of the artillery could be faintly heard.
The men were forbidden to talk out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a
light, and they tried to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the
undertaking heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some columns,
supposing they had reached their destination, halted, piled arms, and settled
down on the cold ground, but the majority marched all night and arrived at
places where they evidently should not have been.
Only Count Orlóv-Denísov with his Cossacks (the least important detachment
of all) got to his appointed place at the right time. This detachment halted at the
outskirts of a forest, on the path leading from the village of Stromílova to
Dmítrovsk.
Toward dawn, Count Orlóv-Denísov, who had dozed off, was awakened by a
deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a Polish sergeant
of Poniatowski’s corps, who explained in Polish that he had come over because
he had been slighted in the service: that he ought long ago to have been made an
officer, that he was braver than any of them, and so he had left them and wished
to pay them out. He said that Murat was spending the night less than a mile from
where they were, and that if they would let him have a convoy of a hundred men
he would capture him alive. Count Orlóv-Denísov consulted his fellow officers.
The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go and
everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and arguing,
Major-General Grékov with two Cossack regiments decided to go with the
Polish sergeant.
“Now, remember,” said Count Orlóv-Denísov to the sergeant at parting, “if
you have been lying I’ll have you hanged like a dog; but if it’s true you shall
have a hundred gold pieces!”
Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and rode away
with Grékov whose men had quickly assembled. They disappeared into the
forest, and Count Orlóv-Denísov, having seen Grékov off, returned, shivering
from the freshness of the early dawn and excited by what he had undertaken on
his own responsibility, and began looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in
the deceptive light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns ought to have
begun to appear on an open declivity to his right. He looked in that direction, but
though the columns would have been visible quite far off, they were not to be
seen. It seemed to the count that things were beginning to stir in the French
camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant confirmed this.
“Oh, it is really too late,” said Count Orlóv, looking at the camp.
As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before our eyes,
it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the sergeant was an
impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian attack would be ruined by
the absence of those two regiments, which he would lead away heaven only
knew where. How could one capture a commander in chief from among such a
mass of troops!
“I am sure that rascal was lying,” said the count.
“They can still be called back,” said one of his suite, who like Count Orlóv
felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the enemy’s camp.
“Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?”
“Will you have them fetched back?”
“Fetch them back, fetch them back!” said Count Orlóv with sudden
determination, looking at his watch. “It will be too late. It is quite light.”
And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grékov. When Grékov
returned, Count Orlóv-Denísov, excited both by the abandoned attempt and by
vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not appear, as well as by the
proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance. All his men felt the same
excitement.
“Mount!” he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and crossed
themselves.... “Forward, with God’s aid!”
“Hurrah-ah-ah!” reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,
trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out of a sack,
dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.
One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the
Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just waking up, ran
off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.
Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind and
around them, they would have captured Murat and everything there. That was
what the officers desired. But it was impossible to make the Cossacks budge
when once they had got booty and prisoners. None of them listened to orders.
Fifteen hundred prisoners and thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides
standards and (what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses, saddles,
horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt with, the prisoners and guns
secured, the booty divided—not without some shouting and even a little fighting
among themselves—and it was on this that the Cossacks all busied themselves.
The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover themselves: they
formed into detachments and began firing. Orlóv-Denísov, still waiting for the
other columns to arrive, advanced no further.
Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that “the First Column
will march” and so on, the infantry of the belated columns, commanded by
Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due order and, as always happens,
had got somewhere, but not to their appointed places. As always happens the
men, starting cheerfully, began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of
confusion, and finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped
about, shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and were
late, gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and went forward,
simply to get somewhere. “We shall get somewhere or other!” And they did
indeed get somewhere, though not to their right places; a few eventually even
got to their right place, but too late to be of any use and only in time to be fired
at. Toll, who in this battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped
assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down everywhere.
Thus he stumbled on Bagovút’s corps in a wood when it was already broad
daylight, though the corps should long before have joined Orlóv-Denísov.
Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing that someone must be
responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the commander of the corps and began
upbraiding him severely, saying that he ought to be shot. General Bagovút, a
fighting old soldier of placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay,
confusion, and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody’s surprise and quite
contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to Toll.
“I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men as well as
anybody,” he said, and advanced with a single division.
Coming out onto a field under the enemy’s fire, this brave general went
straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering in his agitation
whether going into action now, with a single division, would be of any use or no.
Danger, cannon balls, and bullets were just what he needed in his angry mood.
One of the first bullets killed him, and other bullets killed many of his men. And
his division remained under fire for some time quite uselessly.
CHAPTER VII
Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the front,
but Kutúzov accompanied that column. He well knew that nothing but confusion
would come of this battle undertaken against his will, and as far as was in his
power held the troops back. He did not advance.
He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering suggestions that
they should attack.
“The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don’t see that we are
unable to execute complicated maneuvers,” said he to Milorádovich who asked
permission to advance.
“We couldn’t take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in time, and
nothing can be done now!” he replied to someone else.
When Kutúzov was informed that at the French rear—where according to the
reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody—there were now two
battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermólov who was behind him
and to whom he had not spoken since the previous day.
“You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds, but as soon
as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy, forewarned, takes
measures accordingly.”
Ermólov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these words. He
understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that Kutúzov would
content himself with that hint.
“He’s having a little fun at my expense,” said Ermólov softly, nudging with
his knee Raévski who was at his side.
Soon after this, Ermólov moved up to Kutúzov and respectfully remarked:
“It is not too late yet, your Highness—the enemy has not gone away—if you
were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as see a little
smoke.”
Kutúzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat’s troops were
in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every hundred paces he halted for
three quarters of an hour.
The whole battle consisted in what Orlóv-Denísov’s Cossacks had done: the
rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.
In consequence of this battle Kutúzov received a diamond decoration, and
Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also received
pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various grades, and following the
battle fresh changes were made in the staff.
“That’s how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!” said the Russian
officers and generals after the Tarútino battle, letting it be understood that some
fool there is doing things all wrong but that we ourselves should not have done
so, just as people speak today. But people who talk like that either do not know
what they are talking about or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle—
Tarútino, Borodinó, or Austerlitz—takes place as those who planned it
anticipated. That is an essential condition.
A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than during a
battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence the course taken by the
fight, and that course never can be known in advance and never coincides with
the direction of any one force.
If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a given body, the
direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one of those forces, but will
always be a mean—what in mechanics is represented by the diagonal of a
parallelogram of forces.
If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French ones, we find their
wars and battles carried out in accordance with previously formed plans, the
only conclusion to be drawn is that those descriptions are false.
The battle of Tarútino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had in view—to
lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the dispositions; nor that
which Count Orlóv-Denísov may have had in view—to take Murat prisoner; nor
the result of immediately destroying the whole corps, which Bennigsen and
others may have had in view; nor the aim of the officer who wished to go into
action to distinguish himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty
than he got, and so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and
what all the Russians of that day desired—to drive the French out of Russia and
destroy their army—it is quite clear that the battle of Tarútino, just because of its
incongruities, was exactly what was wanted at that stage of the campaign. It
would be difficult and even impossible to imagine any result more opportune
than the actual outcome of this battle. With a minimum of effort and
insignificant losses, despite the greatest confusion, the most important results of
the whole campaign were attained: the transition from retreat to advance, an
exposure of the weakness of the French, and the administration of that shock
which Napoleon’s army had only awaited to begin its flight.
CHAPTER VIII
Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa; there can
be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in the hands of the
French. The Russians retreat and abandon their ancient capital. Moscow,
abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and incalculable wealth, is in
Napoleon’s hands. The Russian army, only half the strength of the French, does
not make a single attempt to attack for a whole month. Napoleon’s position is
most brilliant. He can either fall on the Russian army with double its strength
and destroy it; negotiate an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal make a
menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse, return to
Smolénsk or Vílna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special genius would
seem to be required to retain the brilliant position the French held at that time.
For that, only very simple and easy steps were necessary: not to allow the troops
to loot, to prepare winter clothing—of which there was sufficient in Moscow for
the whole army—and methodically to collect the provisions, of which
(according to the French historians) there were enough in Moscow to supply the
whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of all geniuses, who the
historians declare had control of the army, took none of these steps.
He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used his power
to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses open to him. Of all that
Napoleon might have done: wintering in Moscow, advancing on Petersburg or
on Nízhni-Nóvgorod, or retiring by a more northerly or more southerly route
(say by the road Kutúzov afterwards took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can
be imagined than what he actually did. He remained in Moscow till October,
letting the troops plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a garrison
behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutúzov without joining battle,
turned to the right and reached Málo-Yaroslávets, again without attempting to
break through and take the road Kutúzov took, but retiring instead to Mozháysk
along the devastated Smolénsk road. Nothing more stupid than that could have
been devised, or more disastrous for the army, as the sequel showed. Had
Napoleon’s aim been to destroy his army, the most skillful strategist could hardly
have devised any series of actions that would so completely have accomplished
that purpose, independently of anything the Russian army might do.
Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he destroyed his army
because he wished to, or because he was very stupid, would be as unjust as to
say that he had brought his troops to Moscow because he wished to and because
he was very clever and a genius.
In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the personal
activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws that guided the event.
The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon’s faculties as having
weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did not justify his
actions. He employed all his ability and strength to do the best he could for
himself and his army, as he had done previously and as he did subsequently in
1813. His activity at that time was no less astounding than it was in Egypt, in
Italy, in Austria, and in Prussia. We do not know for certain in how far his genius
was genuine in Egypt—where forty centuries looked down upon his grandeur—
for his great exploits there are all told us by Frenchmen. We cannot accurately
estimate his genius in Austria or Prussia, for we have to draw our information
from French or German sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole
corps without fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to
recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on in Germany.
But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in order to hide our
shame. We have paid for the right to look at the matter plainly and simply, and
we will not abandon that right.
His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as elsewhere.
Order after order and plan after plan were issued by him from the time he
entered Moscow till the time he left it. The absence of citizens and of a
deputation, and even the burning of Moscow, did not disconcert him. He did not
lose sight either of the welfare of his army or of the doings of the enemy, or of
the welfare of the people of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or of
diplomatic considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated peace.
CHAPTER IX
With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry into
Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the movements of the
Russian army, sent army corps out along the different roads, and charged Murat
to find Kutúzov. Then he gave careful directions about the fortification of the
Krémlin, and drew up a brilliant plan for a future campaign over the whole map
of Russia.
With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain Yákovlev,
who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how to get out of
Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and his magnanimity, and
having written a letter to the Emperor Alexander in which he considered it his
duty to inform his Friend and Brother that Rostopchín had managed affairs badly
in Moscow, he dispatched Yákovlev to Petersburg.
Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to Tutólmin, he
dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.
With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave orders to find
and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel Rostopchín was punished by an
order to burn down his houses.
With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a constitution. A
municipality was established and the following announcement issued:
INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!
Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King desires to
arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you how he punishes
disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been taken to put an end to
disorder and to re-establish public security. A paternal administration, chosen
from among yourselves, will form your municipality or city government. It will
take care of you, of your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be
distinguished by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city
will wear a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only wear a red
ribbon round the left arm.
The city police is established on its former footing, and better order already
prevails in consequence of its activity. The government has appointed two
commissaries general, or chiefs of police, and twenty commissaries or captains
of wards have been appointed to the different wards of the city. You will
recognize them by the white ribbon they will wear on the left arm. Several
churches of different denominations are open, and divine service is performed in
them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are returning every day to their homes
and orders have been given that they should find in them the help and protection
due to their misfortunes. These are the measures the government has adopted to
re-establish order and relieve your condition. But to achieve this aim it is
necessary that you should add your efforts and should, if possible, forget the
misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a less cruel fate,
should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death awaits those who make
any attempt on your persons or on what remains of your property, and finally
that you should not doubt that these will be safeguarded, since such is the will of
the greatest and most just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation
you may be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of a state,
live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to another, unite to defeat
the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the military and civil authorities, and
your tears will soon cease to flow!
With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all the troops in
turn should enter Moscow à la maraude * to obtain provisions for themselves, so
that the army might have its future provided for.
* As looters.
With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be brought back and
services to be again performed in the churches.
With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the following was
placarded everywhere:
PROCLAMATION
You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom misfortune
has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of the soil, still kept out in the
fields by groundless fear, listen! Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order
is being restored in it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from their
hiding places on finding that they are respected. Any violence to them or to their
property is promptly punished. His Majesty the Emperor and King protects
them, and considers no one among you his enemy except those who disobey his
orders. He desires to end your misfortunes and restore you to your homes and
families. Respond, therefore, to his benevolent intentions and come to us without
fear. Inhabitants, return with confidence to your abodes! You will soon find
means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and industrious artisans, return to
your work, your houses, your shops, where the protection of guards awaits you!
You shall receive proper pay for your work. And lastly you too, peasants, come
from the forests where you are hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear,
in full assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in the city
where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the products of the soil. The
government has taken the following steps to ensure freedom of sale for them: (1)
From today, peasants, husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood of
Moscow may without any danger bring their supplies of all kinds to two
appointed markets, of which one is on the Mokhováya Street and the other at the
Provision Market. (2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices as
seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a fair price he
will be free to take his goods back to his village and no one may hinder him
under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday of each week are appointed as
the chief market days and to that end a sufficient number of troops will be
stationed along the highroads on Tuesdays and Saturdays at such distances from
the town as to protect the carts. (4) Similar measures will be taken that peasants
with their carts and horses may meet with no hindrance on their return journey.
(5) Steps will immediately be taken to re-establish ordinary trading.
Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and artisans, to
whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry out the paternal intentions
of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to co-operate with him for the public
welfare! Lay your respect and confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite
with us!
With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the people, reviews
were constantly held and rewards distributed. The Emperor rode through the
streets to comfort the inhabitants, and, despite his preoccupation with state
affairs, himself visited the theaters that were established by his order.
In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads, Napoleon also
did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma Mère to be inscribed on
the charitable institutions, thereby combining tender filial affection with the
majestic benevolence of a monarch. He visited the Foundling Hospital and,
allowing the orphans saved by him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed
with Tutólmin. Then, as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be
paid in forged Russian money which he had prepared: “Raising the use of these
means by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let relief be
distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food was too precious to be
given to foreigners, who were for the most part enemies, Napoleon preferred to
supply them with money with which to purchase food from outside, and had
paper rubles distributed to them.”
With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being issued to
inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military duties and to
suppress robbery.
CHAPTER X
But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans—which were not at
all worse than others issued in similar circumstances—did not affect the essence
of the matter but, like the hands of a clock detached from the mechanism, swung
about in an arbitrary and aimless way without engaging the cogwheels.
With reference to the military side—the plan of campaign—that work of
genius of which Thiers remarks that, “His genius never devised anything more
profound, more skillful, or more admirable,” and enters into a polemic with M.
Fain to prove that this work of genius must be referred not to the fourth but to
the fifteenth of October—that plan never was or could be executed, for it was
quite out of touch with the facts of the case. The fortifying of the Krémlin, for
which la Mosquée (as Napoleon termed the church of Basil the Beatified) was to
have been razed to the ground, proved quite useless. The mining of the Krémlin
only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon’s wish that it should be blown up when
he left Moscow—as a child wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be
beaten. The pursuit of the Russian army, about which Napoleon was so
concerned, produced an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch with
the Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to Thiers it was only
eventually found, like a lost pin, by the skill—and apparently the genius—of
Murat.
With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon’s arguments as to his magnanimity
and justice, both to Tutólmin and to Yákovlev (whose chief concern was to
obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless; Alexander did not receive
these envoys and did not reply to their embassage.
With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries
the rest of Moscow burned down.
With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a municipality did
not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain people who formed part of
that municipality and under pretext of preserving order looted Moscow or saved
their own property from being looted.
With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so easily been settled
by Napoleon’s visit to a mosque, no results were achieved. Two or three priests
who were found in Moscow did try to carry out Napoleon’s wish, but one of
them was slapped in the face by a French soldier while conducting service, and a
French official reported of another that: “The priest whom I found and invited to
say Mass cleaned and locked up the church. That night the doors were again
broken open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and other disorders
perpetrated.”
With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious workmen and to
peasants evoked no response. There were no industrious workmen, and the
peasants caught the commissaries who ventured too far out of town with the
proclamation and killed them.
As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the troops, these did
not meet with success either. The theaters set up in the Krémlin and in
Posnyákov’s house were closed again at once because the actors and actresses
were robbed.
Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as well as the
false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The French, collecting
booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the paper money valueless which
Napoleon so graciously distributed to the unfortunate, but even silver lost its
value in relation to gold.
But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders given by
the authorities at that time was Napoleon’s attempt to stop the looting and re-
establish discipline.
This is what the army authorities were reporting:
“Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order is not yet
restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade in a lawful manner. The
sutlers alone venture to trade, and they sell stolen goods.”
“The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of the 3rd
Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate inhabitants hiding in
the cellars the little they have left, even have the ferocity to wound them with
their sabers, as I have repeatedly witnessed.”
“Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and pillaging—October 9.”
“Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our district who
ought to be arrested by a strong force—October 11.”
“The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict orders to stop
pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually seen returning to the
Krémlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and pillage were renewed more
violently than ever yesterday evening, last night, and today. The Emperor sees
with regret that the picked soldiers appointed to guard his person, who should set
an example of discipline, carry disobedience to such a point that they break into
the cellars and stores containing army supplies. Others have disgraced
themselves to the extent of disobeying sentinels and officers, and have abused
and beaten them.”
“The Grand Marshal of the palace,” wrote the governor, “complains bitterly
that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to commit nuisances in all
the courtyards and even under the very windows of the Emperor.”
That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot the
provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated and perished
with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it did not go away.
It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused by the
capture of transport trains on the Smolénsk road, and by the battle of Tarútino.
The news of that battle of Tarútino, unexpectedly received by Napoleon at a
review, evoked in him a desire to punish the Russians (Thiers says), and he
issued the order for departure which the whole army was demanding.
Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they had stolen.
Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal trésor, but on seeing the baggage
trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers says) horror-struck. And yet with
his experience of war he did not order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned,
as he had done with those of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He
gazed at the calèches and carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked
that it was a very good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry provisions,
the sick, and the wounded.
The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal which feels
it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To study the skillful tactics
and aims of Napoleon and his army from the time it entered Moscow till it was
destroyed is like studying the dying leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded
animal. Very often a wounded animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the
hunter’s gun, runs forward and back again, and hastens its own end. Napoleon,
under pressure from his whole army, did the same thing. The rustle of the battle
of Tarútino frightened the beast, and it rushed forward onto the hunter’s gun,
reached him, turned back, and finally—like any wild beast—ran back along the
most disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was familiar.
During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have been the
leader of all these movements—as the figurehead of a ship may seem to a savage
to guide the vessel—acted like a child who, holding a couple of strings inside a
carriage, thinks he is driving it.
CHAPTER XI
Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of the shed, and
on returning stopped by the door to play with a little blue-gray dog, with a long
body and short bandy legs, that jumped about him. This little dog lived in their
shed, sleeping beside Karatáev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the
town but always returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it still
belonged to nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor; the soldier who
told stories called it Femgálka; Karatáev and others called it Gray, or sometimes
Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name, or even of a breed or any definite color did
not seem to trouble the blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and
round as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often gracefully
lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three legs, as if disdaining to
use all four. Everything pleased it. Now it would roll on its back, yelping with
delight, now bask in the sun with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic
about playing with a chip of wood or a straw.
Pierre’s attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only remnant of his
former clothing), a pair of soldier’s trousers which by Karatáev’s advice he tied
with string round the ankles for warmth, and a peasant coat and cap. Physically
he had changed much during this time. He no longer seemed stout, though he
still had the appearance of solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard
and mustache covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested
with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes was resolute,
calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The former slackness which had
shown itself even in his eyes was now replaced by an energetic readiness for
action and resistance. His feet were bare.
Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and horsemen were
passing that morning, then into the distance across the river, then at the dog who
was pretending to be in earnest about biting him, and then at his bare feet which
he placed with pleasure in various positions, moving his dirty thick big toes.
Every time he looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction flitted
across his face. The sight of them reminded him of all he had experienced and
learned during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant to him.
For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts in the
mornings—what is called an “old wives’ summer.”
In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly pleasant
with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in the air.
On everything—far and near—lay the magic crystal glitter seen only at that
time of autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance, with the village,
the church, and the large white house. The bare trees, the sand, the bricks and
roofs of the houses, the green church spire, and the corners of the white house in
the distance, all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with
unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a half-burned
mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still showing dark green
beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled house—which in dull
weather was repulsively ugly—seemed quietly beautiful now, in the clear,
motionless brilliance.
A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a skullcap on his
head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from behind a corner of the shed and
approached Pierre with a friendly wink.
“What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!” (Their name for Pierre.) “Eh? Just like
spring!”
And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his pipe, though
whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.
“To be on the march in such weather...” he began.
Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the corporal told him
that nearly all the troops were starting and there ought to be an order about the
prisoners that day. Sokolóv, one of the soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was
dying, and Pierre told the corporal that something should be done about him.
The corporal replied that Pierre need not worry about that as they had an
ambulance and a permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the
sick, and that in general everything that could happen had been foreseen by the
authorities.
“Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the captain, you
know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to the captain when he
makes his round, he will do anything for you.”
(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with Pierre and
showed him all sorts of favors.)
“‘You see, St. Thomas,’ he said to me the other day. ‘Monsieur Kiril is a man
of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who has had
misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what’s what.... If he wants anything and
asks me, he won’t get a refusal. When one has studied, you see, one likes
education and well-bred people.’ It is for your sake I mention it, Monsieur Kiril.
The other day if it had not been for you that affair would have ended ill.”
And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The affair he had
alluded to had happened a few days before—a fight between the prisoners and
the French soldiers, in which Pierre had succeeded in pacifying his comrades.)
Some of the prisoners who had heard Pierre talking to the corporal immediately
asked what the Frenchman had said. While Pierre was repeating what he had
been told about the army leaving Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier
came up to the door of the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his fingers to his
forehead by way of greeting, he asked Pierre whether the soldier Platoche to
whom he had given a shirt to sew was in that shed.
A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to them,
which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into boots and shirts for
them.
“Ready, ready, dear fellow!” said Karatáev, coming out with a neatly folded
shirt.
Karatáev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at work, was
wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot. His hair was bound
round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree bast, and his round face
seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.
“A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here it is, ready,”
said Platón, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had sewn.
The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his
hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had a long,
greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin bare body, but no shirt. He
was evidently afraid the prisoners looking on would laugh at him, and thrust his
head into the shirt hurriedly. None of the prisoners said a word.
“See, it fits well!” Platón kept repeating, pulling the shirt straight.
The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without raising
his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.
“You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper tools; and,
as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,” said Platón with one of his
round smiles, obviously pleased with his work.
“It’s good, quite good, thank you,” said the Frenchman, in French, “but there
must be some linen left over.”
“It will fit better still when it sets to your body,” said Karatáev, still admiring
his handiwork. “You’ll be nice and comfortable....”
“Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?” said the Frenchman
again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note and gave it to Karatáev.
“But give me the pieces that are over.”
Pierre saw that Platón did not want to understand what the Frenchman was
saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karatáev thanked the Frenchman
for the money and went on admiring his own work. The Frenchman insisted on
having the pieces returned that were left over and asked Pierre to translate what
he said.
“What does he want the bits for?” said Karatáev. “They’d make fine leg bands
for us. Well, never mind.”
And Karatáev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression, took a
small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the Frenchman without
looking at him. “Oh dear!” muttered Karatáev and went away. The Frenchman
looked at the linen, considered for a moment, then looked inquiringly at Pierre
and, as if Pierre’s look had told him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in
a squeaky voice:
“Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!” And handing back the odd bits
he turned and went out.
“There, look at that,” said Karatáev, swaying his head. “People said they were
not Christians, but they too have souls. It’s what the old folk used to say: ‘A
sweating hand’s an open hand, a dry hand’s close.’ He’s naked, but yet he’s given
it back.”
Karatáev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the pieces.
“But they’ll make grand leg bands, dear friend,” he said, and went back into
the shed.
CHAPTER XII
Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and though the
French had offered to move him from the men’s to the officers’ shed, he had
stayed in the shed where he was first put.
In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the extreme
limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his physical strength and
health, of which he had till then been unconscious, and thanks especially to the
fact that the privations came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they
began, he endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this time
he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly striven in vain to
reach. He had long sought in different ways that tranquillity of mind, that inner
harmony which had so impressed him in the soldiers at the battle of Borodinó.
He had sought it in philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life,
in wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for Natásha; he had
sought it by reasoning—and all these quests and experiments had failed him.
And now without thinking about it he had found that peace and inner harmony
only through the horror of death, through privation, and through what he
recognized in Karatáev.
Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as it were
forever washed away from his imagination and memory the agitating thoughts
and feelings that had formerly seemed so important. It did not now occur to him
to think of Russia, or the war, or politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that
all these things were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge
concerning them and therefore could not do so. “Russia and summer weather are
not bound together,” he thought, repeating words of Karatáev’s which he found
strangely consoling. His intention of killing Napoleon and his calculations of the
cabalistic number of the beast of the Apocalypse now seemed to him
meaningless and even ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his
name should not be smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing.
What concern was it of his that somewhere or other that woman was leading the
life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and especially to him, whether
or not they found out that their prisoner’s name was Count Bezúkhov?
He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and quite
agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew’s thoughts somewhat
differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that happiness could only be
negative, but had said it with a shade of bitterness and irony as though he was
really saying that all desire for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to
torment us and never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental
reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one’s needs and
consequent freedom in the choice of one’s occupation, that is, of one’s way of
life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man’s highest happiness. Here and
now for the first time he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he
wanted to eat, drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to
sleep, of warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished
to talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one’s needs—good food,
cleanliness, and freedom—now that he was deprived of all this, seemed to Pierre
to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of occupation, that is, of his way
of life—now that that was so restricted—seemed to him such an easy matter that
he forgot that a superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying
one’s needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation—such freedom as
his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his own life—
is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult and destroys the
desire and possibility of having an occupation.
All Pierre’s daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free. Yet
subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke with enthusiasm
of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable, strong, joyful sensations, and
chiefly of the complete peace of mind and inner freedom which he experienced
only during those weeks.
When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn, and saw
the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still dark at first, the
hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills, and the wooded banks above the
winding river vanishing in the purple distance, when he felt the contact of the
fresh air and heard the noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field,
and when afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun’s rim appeared
solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the hoarfrost, the
distance and the river, all began to sparkle in the glad light—Pierre felt a new joy
and strength in life such as he had never before known. And this not only stayed
with him during the whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in strength as the
hardships of his position increased.
That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still further
strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners formed of him soon
after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge of languages, the respect shown
him by the French, his simplicity, his readiness to give anything asked of him (he
received the allowance of three rubles a week made to officers); with his
strength, which he showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the
hut; his gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still and
thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them incomprehensible), he
appeared to them a rather mysterious and superior being. The very qualities that
had been a hindrance, if not actually harmful, to him in the world he had lived in
—his strength, his disdain for the comforts of life, his absent-mindedness and
simplicity—here among these people gave him almost the status of a hero. And
Pierre felt that their opinion placed responsibilities upon him.
CHAPTER XIII
The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and seventh of
October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts loaded, and troops and
baggage trains started.
At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing shakos
and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in front of the
sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses sounded all along the lines.
In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only awaited the
order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolóv, pale and thin with dark shadows round
his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot and not dressed. His eyes, prominent
from the emaciation of his face, gazed inquiringly at his comrades who were
paying no attention to him, and he moaned regularly and quietly. It was evidently
not so much his sufferings that caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as his
fear and grief at being left alone.
Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes Karatáev had made
for him from some leather a French soldier had torn off a tea chest and brought
to have his boots mended with, went up to the sick man and squatted down
beside him.
“You know, Sokolóv, they are not all going away! They have a hospital here.
You may be better off than we others,” said Pierre.
“O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!” moaned the man in a louder
voice.
“I’ll go and ask them again directly,” said Pierre, rising and going to the door
of the shed.
Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him a pipe the
day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal and soldiers were in
marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had metal straps, and these changed
their familiar faces.
The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The prisoners had to
be counted before being let out.
“Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?...” Pierre began.
But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal he knew
or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that moment. Moreover,
just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of drums was suddenly heard from both
sides. The corporal frowned at Pierre’s words and, uttering some meaningless
oaths, slammed the door. The shed became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the
drums on two sides drowned the sick man’s groans.
“There it is!... It again!...” said Pierre to himself, and an involuntary shudder
ran down his spine. In the corporal’s changed face, in the sound of his voice, in
the stirring and deafening noise of the drums, he recognized that mysterious,
callous force which compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men
—that force the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To fear
or to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or exhortations to those who
served as its tools, was useless. Pierre knew this now. One had to wait and
endure. He did not again go to the sick man, nor turn to look at him, but stood
frowning by the door of the hut.
When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one another
like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed his way forward and
approached that very captain who as the corporal had assured him was ready to
do anything for him. The captain was also in marching kit, and on his cold face
appeared that same it which Pierre had recognized in the corporal’s words and in
the roll of the drums.
“Pass on, pass on!” the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and looking at the
prisoners who thronged past him.
Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.
“What now?” the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing Pierre.
Pierre told him about the sick man.
“He’ll manage to walk, devil take him!” said the captain. “Pass on, pass on!”
he continued without looking at Pierre.
“But he is dying,” Pierre again began.
“Be so good...” shouted the captain, frowning angrily.
“Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam...” rattled the drums, and Pierre understood that
this mysterious force completely controlled these men and that it was now
useless to say any more.
The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to march in
front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among them, and about three
hundred men.
The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all strangers to Pierre
and much better dressed than he. They looked at him and at his shoes
mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him walked a fat major with a sallow,
bloated, angry face, who was wearing a Kazán dressing gown tied round with a
towel, and who evidently enjoyed the respect of his fellow prisoners. He kept
one hand, in which he clasped his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his
dressing gown and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting and
puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody because he thought he
was being pushed and that they were all hurrying when they had nowhere to
hurry to and were all surprised at something when there was nothing to be
surprised at. Another, a thin little officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing
where they were now being taken and how far they would get that day. An
official in felt boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side to
side and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations as to
what had been burned down and what this or that part of the city was that they
could see. A third officer, who by his accent was a Pole, disputed with the
commissariat officer, arguing that he was mistaken in his identification of the
different wards of Moscow.
“What are you disputing about?” said the major angrily. “What does it matter
whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it’s burned down, and there’s
an end of it.... What are you pushing for? Isn’t the road wide enough?” said he,
turning to a man behind him who was not pushing him at all.
“Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?” the prisoners on one side and another
were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. “All beyond the river, and
Zúbova, and in the Krémlin.... Just look! There’s not half of it left. Yes, I told
you—the whole quarter beyond the river, and so it is.”
“Well, you know it’s burned, so what’s the use of talking?” said the major.
As they passed near a church in the Khamóvniki (one of the few unburned
quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly started to one side
and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.
“Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And smeared
with something!”
Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked these
exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the palings
surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw better than he
did, he found that this was the body of a man, set upright against the palings with
its face smeared with soot.
“Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!...” the convoy
guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh virulence, drove away
with their swords the crowd of prisoners who were gazing at the dead man.
CHAPTER XIV
Through the cross streets of the Khamóvniki quarter the prisoners marched,
followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons belonging to that
escort, but when they reached the supply stores they came among a huge and
closely packed train of artillery mingled with private vehicles.
At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get across. From the
bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving baggage trains before and
behind them. To the right, where the Kalúga road turns near Neskúchny, endless
rows of troops and carts stretched away into the distance. These were troops of
Beauharnais’ corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the
riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were Ney’s troops and transport.
Davout’s troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the
Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kalúga road. But the
baggage trains stretched out so that the last of Beauharnais’ train had not yet got
out of Moscow and reached the Kalúga road when the vanguard of Ney’s army
was already emerging from the Great Ordýnka Street.
When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few steps
forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles and men
crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few hundred paces that
separated the bridge from the Kalúga road, taking more than an hour to do so,
and came out upon the square where the streets of the Transmoskvá ward and the
Kalúga road converge, and the prisoners jammed close together had to stand for
some hours at that crossway. From all sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard
the rattle of wheels, the tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger and abuse.
Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house, listening to that noise
which mingled in his imagination with the roll of the drums.
To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the wall of the
half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.
“What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They’ve loaded goods even on the
cannon! Look there, those are furs!” they exclaimed. “Just see what the
blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one has behind in the cart....
Why, those are settings taken from some icons, by heaven!... Oh, the rascals!...
See how that fellow has loaded himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord,
they’ve even grabbed those chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the
trunks.... Heavens! They’re fighting.”
“That’s right, hit him on the snout—on his snout! Like this, we shan’t get
away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be Napoleon’s own.
See what horses! And the monograms with a crown! It’s like a portable house....
That fellow’s dropped his sack and doesn’t see it. Fighting again... A woman
with a baby, and not bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that’s the way they’ll let
you pass.... Just look, there’s no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they
are! In carriages—see how comfortably they’ve settled themselves!”
Again, as at the church in Khamóvniki, a wave of general curiosity bore all
the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to his stature, saw over
the heads of the others what so attracted their curiosity. In three carriages
involved among the munition carts, closely squeezed together, sat women with
rouged faces, dressed in glaring colors, who were shouting something in shrill
voices.
From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the mysterious
force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful: neither the corpse smeared
with soot for fun nor these women hurrying away nor the burned ruins of
Moscow. All that he now witnessed scarcely made an impression on him—as if
his soul, making ready for a hard struggle, refused to receive impressions that
might weaken it.
The women’s vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts, soldiers,
wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers, ammunition carts, more
soldiers, and now and then women.
Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.
All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some invisible power.
During the hour Pierre watched them they all came flowing from the different
streets with one and the same desire to get on quickly; they all jostled one
another, began to grow angry and to fight, white teeth gleamed, brows frowned,
ever the same words of abuse flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the
same swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck Pierre
that morning on the corporal’s face when the drums were beating.
It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the escort collected
his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way in among the baggage
trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all sides, emerged onto the Kalúga road.
They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the sun
began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men began to
prepare for their night’s rest. They all appeared angry and dissatisfied. For a long
time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could be heard from all sides. A carriage
that followed the escort ran into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its
pole. Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat the
carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others fought among
themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly wounded on the head by
a sword.
It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid fields in the chill
dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and the same feeling of unpleasant
awakening from the hurry and eagerness to push on that had seized them at the
start. Once at a standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet
know where they were going, and that much that was painful and difficult
awaited them on this journey.
During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than they had done
at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the first time received horseflesh for
their meat ration.
From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like
personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to their
former friendly relations.
This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of prisoners, it
was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one Russian soldier, who had
pretended to suffer from colic, had escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat a
Russian soldier cruelly for straying too far from the road, and heard his friend
the captain reprimand and threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer
on account of the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer’s
excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer replied that the
order was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre felt that that fatal force
which had crushed him during the executions, but which he had not felt during
his imprisonment, now again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but he felt
that in proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush him, there grew and
strengthened in his soul a power of life independent of it.
He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with his
comrades.
Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen in Moscow,
or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of the order to shoot
them which had been announced to them. As if in reaction against the worsening
of their position they were all particularly animated and gay. They spoke of
personal reminiscences, of amusing scenes they had witnessed during the
campaign, and avoided all talk of their present situation.
The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in the sky. A
red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon from the rising full
moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely in the gray haze. It grew light. The
evening was ending, but the night had not yet come. Pierre got up and left his
new companions, crossing between the campfires to the other side of the road
where he had been told the common soldier prisoners were stationed. He wanted
to talk to them. On the road he was stopped by a French sentinel who ordered
him back.
Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an
unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him and
dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of the cart and
remained motionless a long while sunk in thought. Suddenly he burst out into a
fit of his broad, good-natured laughter, so loud that men from various sides
turned with surprise to see what this strange and evidently solitary laughter could
mean.
“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: “The soldier did
not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me captive. What, me?
Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!...” and he laughed till tears started
to his eyes.
A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing at all
by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther away from the
inquisitive man, and looked around him.
The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the crackling of
campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the red campfires were
growing paler and dying down. High up in the light sky hung the full moon.
Forests and fields beyond the camp, unseen before, were now visible in the
distance. And farther still, beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating,
limitless distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the
twinkling stars in its faraway depths. “And all that is me, all that is within me,
and it is all I!” thought Pierre. “And they caught all that and put it into a shed
boarded up with planks!” He smiled, and went and lay down to sleep beside his
companions.
CHAPTER XV
In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutúzov with a letter from
Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow, though Napoleon
was already not far from Kutúzov on the old Kalúga road. Kutúzov replied to
this letter as he had done to the one formerly brought by Lauriston, saying that
there could be no question of peace.
Soon after that a report was received from Dórokhov’s guerrilla detachment
operating to the left of Tarútino that troops of Broussier’s division had been seen
at Formínsk and that being separated from the rest of the French army they
might easily be destroyed. The soldiers and officers again demanded action.
Generals on the staff, excited by the memory of the easy victory at Tarútino,
urged Kutúzov to carry out Dórokhov’s suggestion. Kutúzov did not consider
any offensive necessary. The result was a compromise which was inevitable: a
small detachment was sent to Formínsk to attack Broussier.
By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most difficult and
important one, was entrusted to Dokhtúrov—that same modest little Dokhtúrov
whom no one had described to us as drawing up plans of battles, dashing about
in front of regiments, showering crosses on batteries, and so on, and who was
thought to be and was spoken of as undecided and undiscerning—but whom we
find commanding wherever the position was most difficult all through the
Russo-French wars from Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he remained
last at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what was possible when
all were flying and perishing and not a single general was left in the rear guard.
Ill with fever he went to Smolénsk with twenty thousand men to defend the town
against Napoleon’s whole army. In Smolénsk, at the Malákhov Gate, he had
hardly dozed off in a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the
bombardment of the town—and Smolénsk held out all day long. At the battle of
Borodinó, when Bagratión was killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank
had fallen and the full force of the French artillery fire was directed against it,
the man sent there was this same irresolute and undiscerning Dokhtúrov—
Kutúzov hastening to rectify a mistake he had made by sending someone else
there first. And the quiet little Dokhtúrov rode thither, and Borodinó became the
greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in
verse and prose, but of Dokhtúrov scarcely a word has been said.
It was Dokhtúrov again whom they sent to Formínsk and from there to Málo-
Yaroslávets, the place where the last battle with the French was fought and
where the obvious disintegration of the French army began; and we are told of
many geniuses and heroes of that period of the campaign, but of Dokhtúrov
nothing or very little is said and that dubiously. And this silence about
Dokhtúrov is the clearest testimony to his merit.
It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a machine to
imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance and is interfering with its
action and tossing about in it is its most important part. The man who does not
understand the construction of the machine cannot conceive that the small
connecting cogwheel which revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of
the machine, and not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.
On the tenth of October when Dokhtúrov had gone halfway to Formínsk and
stopped at the village of Aristóvo, preparing faithfully to execute the orders he
had received, the whole French army having, in its convulsive movement,
reached Murat’s position apparently in order to give battle—suddenly without
any reason turned off to the left onto the new Kalúga road and began to enter
Formínsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that time Dokhtúrov had
under his command, besides Dórokhov’s detachment, the two small guerrilla
detachments of Figner and Seslávin.
On the evening of October 11 Seslávin came to the Aristóvo headquarters with
a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner said that the troops that had
entered Formínsk that day were the vanguard of the whole army, that Napoleon
was there and the whole army had left Moscow four days previously. That same
evening a house serf who had come from Bórovsk said he had seen an immense
army entering the town. Some Cossacks of Dokhtúrov’s detachment reported
having sighted the French Guards marching along the road to Bórovsk. From all
these reports it was evident that where they had expected to meet a single
division there was now the whole French army marching from Moscow in an
unexpected direction—along the Kalúga road. Dokhtúrov was unwilling to
undertake any action, as it was not clear to him now what he ought to do. He had
been ordered to attack Formínsk. But only Broussier had been there at that time
and now the whole French army was there. Ermólov wished to act on his own
judgment, but Dokhtúrov insisted that he must have Kutúzov’s instructions. So it
was decided to send a dispatch to the staff.
For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovítinov, was chosen, who was to
explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a written report.
Toward midnight Bolkhovítinov, having received the dispatch and verbal
instructions, galloped off to the General Staff accompanied by a Cossack with
spare horses.
CHAPTER XVI
It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four days. Having
changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour and a half over a
sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovítinov reached Litashëvka after one o’clock at night.
Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle fence hung a signboard, GENERAL
STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he entered a dark passage.
“The general on duty, quick! It’s very important!” said he to someone who had
risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.
“He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third night he has
not slept,” said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper. “You should wake the
captain first.”
“But this is very important, from General Dokhtúrov,” said Bolkhovítinov,
entering the open door which he had found by feeling in the dark.
The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.
“Your honor, your honor! A courier.”
“What? What’s that? From whom?” came a sleepy voice.
“From Dokhtúrov and from Alexéy Petróvich. Napoleon is at Formínsk,” said
Bolkhovítinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but guessing by the
voice that it was not Konovnítsyn.
The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.
“I don’t like waking him,” he said, fumbling for something. “He is very ill.
Perhaps this is only a rumor.”
“Here is the dispatch,” said Bolkhovítinov. “My orders are to give it at once to
the general on duty.”
“Wait a moment, I’ll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you always
hide it?” said the voice of the man who was stretching himself, to the orderly.
(This was Shcherbínin, Konovnítsyn’s adjutant.) “I’ve found it, I’ve found it!”
he added.
The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbínin was fumbling for something
on the candlestick.
“Oh, the nasty beasts!” said he with disgust.
By the light of the sparks Bolkhovítinov saw Shcherbínin’s youthful face as he
held the candle, and the face of another man who was still asleep. This was
Konovnítsyn.
When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned up, first
blue and then red, Shcherbínin lit the tallow candle, from the candlestick of
which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were running away, and looked
at the messenger. Bolkhovítinov was bespattered all over with mud and had
smeared his face by wiping it with his sleeve.
“Who gave the report?” inquired Shcherbínin, taking the envelope.
“The news is reliable,” said Bolkhovítinov. “Prisoners, Cossacks, and the
scouts all say the same thing.”
“There’s nothing to be done, we’ll have to wake him,” said Shcherbínin, rising
and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay covered by a greatcoat. “Peter
Petróvich!” said he. (Konovnítsyn did not stir.) “To the General Staff!” he said
with a smile, knowing that those words would be sure to arouse him.
And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On Konovnítsyn’s
handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever, there still remained for an
instant a faraway dreamy expression remote from present affairs, but then he
suddenly started and his face assumed its habitual calm and firm appearance.
“Well, what is it? From whom?” he asked immediately but without hurry,
blinking at the light.
While listening to the officer’s report Konovnítsyn broke the seal and read the
dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his legs in their woolen
stockings to the earthen floor and began putting on his boots. Then he took off
his nightcap, combed his hair over his temples, and donned his cap.
“Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness.”
Konovnítsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of great
importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or ask himself
whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest him. He regarded the
whole business of the war not with his intelligence or his reason but by
something else. There was within him a deep unexpressed conviction that all
would be well, but that one must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but
must only attend to one’s own work. And he did his work, giving his whole
strength to the task.
Peter Petróvich Konovnítsyn, like Dokhtúrov, seems to have been included
merely for propriety’s sake in the list of the so-called heroes of 1812—the
Barclays, Raévskis, Ermólovs, Plátovs, and Milorádoviches. Like Dokhtúrov he
had the reputation of being a man of very limited capacity and information, and
like Dokhtúrov he never made plans of battle but was always found where the
situation was most difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he had
always slept with his door open, giving orders that every messenger should be
allowed to wake him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that Kutúzov
reproved him for it and feared to send him to the front, and like Dokhtúrov he
was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without clatter or noise, constitute
the most essential part of the machine.
Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnítsyn frowned—partly
from an increased pain in his head and partly at the unpleasant thought that
occurred to him, of how all that nest of influential men on the staff would be
stirred up by this news, especially Bennigsen, who ever since Tarútino had been
at daggers drawn with Kutúzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel,
issue orders, and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him
though he knew it could not be helped.
And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news, immediately
began to expound his plans to a general sharing his quarters, until Konovnítsyn,
who listened in weary silence, reminded him that they must go to see his
Highness.
CHAPTER XVII
Kutúzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often fell asleep
unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his bed without undressing,
he generally remained awake thinking.
So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred head on his
plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and peering into the darkness.
Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more influence
than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him, Kutúzov was more at ease
as to the possibility of himself and his troops being obliged to take part in
useless aggressive movements. The lesson of the Tarútino battle and of the day
before it, which Kutúzov remembered with pain, must, he thought, have some
effect on others too.
“They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive. Patience
and time are my warriors, my champions,” thought Kutúzov. He knew that an
apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe, but
if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on
edge. Like an experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was wounded, and
wounded as only the whole strength of Russia could have wounded it, but
whether it was mortally wounded or not was still an undecided question. Now by
the fact of Lauriston and Barthélemi having been sent, and by the reports of the
guerrillas, Kutúzov was almost sure that the wound was mortal. But he needed
further proofs and it was necessary to wait.
“They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall see!
Continual maneuvers, continual advances!” thought he. “What for? Only to
distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are like children from
whom one can’t get any sensible account of what has happened because they all
want to show how well they can fight. But that’s not what is needed now.
“And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to them that
when they have thought of two or three contingencies” (he remembered the
general plan sent him from Petersburg) “they have foreseen everything. But the
contingencies are endless.”
The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodinó was
mortal or not had hung over Kutúzov’s head for a whole month. On the one hand
the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutúzov felt assured with all his
being that the terrible blow into which he and all the Russians had put their
whole strength must have been mortal. But in any case proofs were needed; he
had waited a whole month for them and grew more impatient the longer he
waited. Lying on his bed during those sleepless nights he did just what he
reproached those younger generals for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible
contingencies, just like the younger men, but with this difference, that he saw
thousands of contingencies instead of two or three and based nothing on them.
The longer he thought the more contingencies presented themselves. He
imagined all sorts of movements of the Napoleonic army as a whole or in
sections—against Petersburg, or against him, or to outflank him. He thought too
of the possibility (which he feared most of all) that Napoleon might fight him
with his own weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutúzov even
imagined that Napoleon’s army might turn back through Medýn and Yukhnóv,
but the one thing he could not foresee was what happened—the insane,
convulsive stampede of Napoleon’s army during its first eleven days after
leaving Moscow: a stampede which made possible what Kutúzov had not yet
even dared to think of—the complete extermination of the French. Dórokhov’s
report about Broussier’s division, the guerrillas’ reports of distress in Napoleon’s
army, rumors of preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition
that the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were only
suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not to Kutúzov.
With his sixty years’ experience he knew what value to attach to rumors, knew
how apt people who desire anything are to group all news so that it appears to
confirm what they desire, and he knew how readily in such cases they omit all
that makes for the contrary. And the more he desired it the less he allowed
himself to believe it. This question absorbed all his mental powers. All else was
to him only life’s customary routine. To such customary routine belonged his
conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from Tarútino to Madame de
Staël, the reading of novels, the distribution of awards, his correspondence with
Petersburg, and so on. But the destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw,
was his heart’s one desire.
On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm and thinking
of that.
There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll, Konovnítsyn,
and Bolkhovítinov.
“Eh, who’s there? Come in, come in! What news?” the field marshal called
out to them.
While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the substance of
the news.
“Who brought it?” asked Kutúzov with a look which, when the candle was lit,
struck Toll by its cold severity.
“There can be no doubt about it, your Highness.”
“Call him in, call him here.”
Kutúzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big paunch
resting against the other which was doubled under him. He screwed up his
seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more carefully, as if wishing to read in his
face what preoccupied his own mind.
“Tell me, tell me, friend,” said he to Bolkhovítinov in his low, aged voice, as
he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his chest, “come nearer—
nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That Napoleon has left Moscow?
Are you sure? Eh?”
Bolkhovítinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he had been
told to report.
“Speak quicker, quicker! Don’t torture me!” Kutúzov interrupted him.
Bolkhovítinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting instructions.
Toll was beginning to say something but Kutúzov checked him. He tried to say
something, but his face suddenly puckered and wrinkled; he waved his arm at
Toll and turned to the opposite side of the room, to the corner darkened by the
icons that hung there.
“O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer...” said he in a tremulous
voice with folded hands. “Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O Lord!” and he wept.
CHAPTER XVIII
From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all Kutúzov’s
activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by authority, by guile, and by
entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers, or encounters with the perishing
enemy. Dokhtúrov went to Málo-Yaroslávets, but Kutúzov lingered with the
main army and gave orders for the evacuation of Kalúga—a retreat beyond
which town seemed to him quite possible.
Everywhere Kutúzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for his retreat
fled in the opposite direction.
Napoleon’s historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at Tarútino and
Málo-Yaroslávets, and make conjectures as to what would have happened had
Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich southern provinces.
But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from advancing into
those southern provinces (for the Russian army did not bar his way), the
historians forget that nothing could have saved his army, for then already it bore
within itself the germs of inevitable ruin. How could that army—which had
found abundant supplies in Moscow and had trampled them underfoot instead of
keeping them, and on arriving at Smolénsk had looted provisions instead of
storing them—how could that army recuperate in Kalúga province, which was
inhabited by Russians such as those who lived in Moscow, and where fire had
the same property of consuming what was set ablaze?
That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodinó and the
pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were, the chemical elements of
dissolution.
The members of what had once been an army—Napoleon himself and all his
soldiers fled—without knowing whither, each concerned only to make his escape
as quickly as possible from this position, of the hopelessness of which they were
all more or less vaguely conscious.
So it came about that at the council at Málo-Yaroslávets, when the generals
pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all mouths were closed
by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier Mouton who, speaking last,
said what they all felt: that the one thing needful was to get away as quickly as
possible; and no one, not even Napoleon, could say anything against that truth
which they all recognized.
But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away, there still
remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must flee. An external shock
was needed to overcome that shame, and this shock came in due time. It was
what the French called “le hourra de l’Empereur.”
The day after the council at Málo-Yaroslávets Napoleon rode out early in the
morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of marshals and an escort, on
the pretext of inspecting the army and the scene of the previous and of the
impending battle. Some Cossacks on the prowl for booty fell in with the
Emperor and very nearly captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture Napoleon
then, what saved him was the very thing that was destroying the French army,
the booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarútino they went after
plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed after the plunder
and Napoleon managed to escape.
When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor himself in
the midst of his army, it was clear that there was nothing for it but to fly as fast
as possible along the nearest, familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old
stomach understood that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and
under the influence of the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once agreed
with Mouton and issued orders—as the historians tell us—to retreat by the
Smolénsk road.
That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated, does not
prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces which influenced the
whole army and directed it along the Mozháysk (that is, the Smolénsk) road
acted simultaneously on him also.
CHAPTER XIX
A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to go a
thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him at the end of
those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a promised land to have the
strength to move.
The promised land for the French during their advance had been Moscow,
during their retreat it was their native land. But that native land was too far off,
and for a man going a thousand miles it is absolutely necessary to set aside his
final goal and to say to himself: “Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles
off where I shall rest and spend the night,” and during the first day’s journey that
resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his hopes and desires. And
the impulses felt by a single person are always magnified in a crowd.
For the French retreating along the old Smolénsk road, the final goal—their
native land—was too remote, and their immediate goal was Smolénsk, toward
which all their desires and hopes, enormously intensified in the mass, urged
them on. It was not that they knew that much food and fresh troops awaited them
in Smolénsk, nor that they were told so (on the contrary their superior officers,
and Napoleon himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this
alone could give them strength to move on and endure their present privations.
So both those who knew and those who did not know deceived themselves, and
pushed on to Smolénsk as to a promised land.
Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising energy and
unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on. Besides the common
impulse which bound the whole crowd of French into one mass and supplied
them with a certain energy, there was another cause binding them together—
their great numbers. As with the physical law of gravity, their enormous mass
drew the individual human atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they
moved like a whole nation.
Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a prisoner to
escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one hand the force of this
common attraction to Smolénsk, their goal, drew each of them in the same
direction; on the other hand an army corps could not surrender to a company, and
though the French availed themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach
themselves and to surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not
always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift movement
deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only difficult but impossible
for the Russians to stop this movement, to which the French were directing all
their energies. Beyond a certain limit no mechanical disruption of the body could
hasten the process of decomposition.
A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a certain limit of
time in less than which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On the contrary the
greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow becomes.
Of the Russian commanders Kutúzov alone understood this. When the flight
of the French army along the Smolénsk road became well defined, what
Konovnítsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of October began to
occur. The superior officers all wanted to distinguish themselves, to cut off, to
seize, to capture, and to overthrow the French, and all clamored for action.
Kutúzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited in the case
of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.
He could not tell them what we say now: “Why fight, why block the road,
losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate wretches? What is
the use of that, when a third of their army has melted away on the road from
Moscow to Vyázma without any battle?” But drawing from his aged wisdom
what they could understand, he told them of the golden bridge, and they laughed
at and slandered him, flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the
dying beast.
Ermólov, Milorádovich, Plátov, and others in proximity to the French near
Vyázma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up two French corps,
and by way of reporting their intention to Kutúzov they sent him a blank sheet of
paper in an envelope.
And try as Kutúzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked, trying to
bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to the attack with music
and with drums beating, and killed and lost thousands of men.
But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army, closing
up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily melting away, to pursue
its fatal path to Smolénsk.
BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812
CHAPTER I
The Battle of Borodinó, with the occupation of Moscow that followed it and
the flight of the French without further conflicts, is one of the most instructive
phenomena in history.
All historians agree that the external activity of states and nations in their
conflicts with one another is expressed in wars, and that as a direct result of
greater or less success in war the political strength of states and nations increases
or decreases.
Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or emperor, having
quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his enemy’s army, gains a victory
by killing three, five, or ten thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an
entire nation of several millions, all the facts of history (as far as we know it)
confirm the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one army
against another is the cause, or at least an essential indication, of an increase or
decrease in the strength of the nation—even though it is unintelligible why the
defeat of an army—a hundredth part of a nation—should oblige that whole
nation to submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the rights of the
conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the defeated. An army has
suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its rights in proportion to the severity
of the reverse, and if its army suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite
subjugated.
So according to history it has been found from the most ancient times, and so
it is to our own day. All Napoleon’s wars serve to confirm this rule. In
proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army Austria loses its rights, and the
rights and the strength of France increase. The victories of the French at Jena
and Auerstädt destroy the independent existence of Prussia.
But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow is taken
and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia that ceases to exist, but the
French army of six hundred thousand, and then Napoleonic France itself. To
strain the facts to fit the rules of history: to say that the field of battle at
Borodinó remained in the hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were
other battles that destroyed Napoleon’s army, is impossible.
After the French victory at Borodinó there was no general engagement nor
any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist. What does this
mean? If it were an example taken from the history of China, we might say that
it was not an historic phenomenon (which is the historians’ usual expedient when
anything does not fit their standards); if the matter concerned some brief conflict
in which only a small number of troops took part, we might treat it as an
exception; but this event occurred before our fathers’ eyes, and for them it was a
question of the life or death of their fatherland, and it happened in the greatest of
all known wars.
The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodinó to the
expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does not produce a
conquest and is not even an invariable indication of conquest; it proved that the
force which decides the fate of peoples lies not in the conquerors, nor even in
armies and battles, but in something else.
The French historians, describing the condition of the French army before it
left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army, except the cavalry,
the artillery, and the transport—there was no forage for the horses or the cattle.
That was a misfortune no one could remedy, for the peasants of the district
burned their hay rather than let the French have it.
The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the peasants Karp
and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow drove in their carts to
pillage the town, and in general personally failed to manifest any heroic
feelings), and the whole innumerable multitude of such peasants, did not bring
their hay to Moscow for the high price offered them, but burned it instead.
Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with rapiers
according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has gone on for some
time; suddenly one of the combatants, feeling himself wounded and
understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his life, throws down his
rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then
let us imagine that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and
simplest means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by traditions of
chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of the case, insisted that he had gained
his victory with the rapier according to all the rules of art. One can imagine what
confusion and obscurity would result from such an account of the duel.
The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was the
French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up the
cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to explain the matter according to
the rules of fencing are the historians who have described the event.
After the burning of Smolénsk a war began which did not follow any previous
traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the retreats after battles, the
blow dealt at Borodinó and the renewed retreat, the burning of Moscow, the
capture of marauders, the seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all
departures from the rules.
Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing attitude in
Moscow and instead of his opponent’s rapier saw a cudgel raised above his head,
he did not cease to complain to Kutúzov and to the Emperor Alexander that the
war was being carried on contrary to all the rules—as if there were any rules for
killing people. In spite of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance
of the rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it seemed
rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to assume a pose en
quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and to make an adroit thrust en
prime, and so on—the cudgel of the people’s war was lifted with all its menacing
and majestic strength, and without consulting anyone’s tastes or rules and
regardless of anything else, it rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but
consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had perished.
And it is well for a people who do not—as the French did in 1813—salute
according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt of their rapier gracefully
and politely, hand it to their magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of trial,
without asking what rules others have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily
pick up the first cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the feeling of
resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and
compassion.
CHAPTER II
One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the so-called laws
of war is the action of scattered groups against men pressed together in a mass.
Such action always occurs in wars that take on a national character. In such
actions, instead of two crowds opposing each other, the men disperse, attack
singly, run away when attacked by stronger forces, but again attack when
opportunity offers. This was done by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain
tribes in the Caucasus, and by the Russians in 1812.
People have called this kind of war “guerrilla warfare” and assume that by so
calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a war does not fit in under
any rule and is directly opposed to a well-known rule of tactics which is
accepted as infallible. That rule says that an attacker should concentrate his
forces in order to be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict.
Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly infringes that rule.
This contradiction arises from the fact that military science assumes the
strength of an army to be identical with its numbers. Military science says that
the more troops the greater the strength. Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison.
*
* Large battalions are always victorious.
Esaul Lováyski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow, pale-faced,
fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm self-satisfaction in his face and
bearing. Though it was impossible to say in what the peculiarity of the horse and
rider lay, yet at first glance at the esaul and Denísov one saw that the latter was
wet and uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the
esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always and that
he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was one with his
horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold strength.
A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and wearing a
gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.
A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghíz mount with an enormous tail
and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a blue French overcoat.
Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and blue
cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on to the hussar with
cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed about him with surprise. This
was the French drummer boy captured that morning.
Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars in
threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in French
greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The horses, being
drenched by the rain, all looked black whether chestnut or bay. Their necks, with
their wet, close-clinging manes, looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them.
Clothes, saddles, reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and
the fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not to stir,
so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and not admit the fresh
cold water that was leaking in under their seats, their knees, and at the back of
their necks. In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by
French horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front,
rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the water that
lay in the ruts.
Denísov’s horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and bumped his
rider’s knee against a tree.
“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed Denísov angrily, and showing his teeth he struck
his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and his comrades with
mud.
Denísov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from hunger (none
of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more because he still had no
news from Dólokhov and the man sent to capture a “tongue” had not returned.
“There’ll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as today. It’s too
risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it off till another day one of the big
guerrilla detachments will snatch the prey from under our noses,” thought
Denísov, continually peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from
Dólokhov.
On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to the right,
Denísov stopped.
“There’s someone coming,” said he.
The esaul looked in the direction Denísov indicated.
“There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not presupposable that it is
the lieutenant colonel himself,” said the esaul, who was fond of using words the
Cossacks did not know.
The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer visible, but
they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary gallop and using his
leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and drenched, whose trousers had
worked up to above his knees. Behind him, standing in the stirrups, trotted a
Cossack. The officer, a very young lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry
eyes, galloped up to Denísov and handed him a sodden envelope.
“From the general,” said the officer. “Please excuse its not being quite dry.”
Denísov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.
“There, they kept telling us: ‘It’s dangerous, it’s dangerous,’” said the officer,
addressing the esaul while Denísov was reading the dispatch. “But Komaróv and
I”—he pointed to the Cossack—“were prepared. We have each of us two
pistols.... But what’s this?” he asked, noticing the French drummer boy. “A
prisoner? You’ve already been in action? May I speak to him?”
“Wostóv! Pétya!” exclaimed Denísov, having run through the dispatch. “Why
didn’t you say who you were?” and turning with a smile he held out his hand to
the lad.
The officer was Pétya Rostóv.
All the way Pétya had been preparing himself to behave with Denísov as
befitted a grown-up man and an officer—without hinting at their previous
acquaintance. But as soon as Denísov smiled at him Pétya brightened up,
blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner he had been rehearsing, and
began telling him how he had already been in a battle near Vyázma and how a
certain hussar had distinguished himself there.
“Well, I am glad to see you,” Denísov interrupted him, and his face again
assumed its anxious expression.
“Michael Feoklítych,” said he to the esaul, “this is again fwom that German,
you know. He”—he indicated Pétya—“is serving under him.”
And Denísov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a repetition of
the German general’s demand that he should join forces with him for an attack
on the transport.
“If we don’t take it tomowwow, he’ll snatch it fwom under our noses,” he
added.
While Denísov was talking to the esaul, Pétya—abashed by Denísov’s cold
tone and supposing that it was due to the condition of his trousers—furtively
tried to pull them down under his greatcoat so that no one should notice it, while
maintaining as martial an air as possible.
“Will there be any orders, your honor?” he asked Denísov, holding his hand at
the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general for which he had
prepared himself, “or shall I remain with your honor?”
“Orders?” Denísov repeated thoughtfully. “But can you stay till tomowwow?”
“Oh, please... May I stay with you?” cried Pétya.
“But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?” asked Denísov.
Pétya blushed.
“He gave me no instructions. I think I could?” he returned, inquiringly.
“Well, all wight,” said Denísov.
And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting place
arranged near the watchman’s hut in the forest, and told the officer on the
Kirghíz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant) to go and find out where
Dólokhov was and whether he would come that evening. Denísov himself
intended going with the esaul and Pétya to the edge of the forest where it
reached out to Shámshevo, to have a look at the part of the French bivouac they
were to attack next day.
“Well, old fellow,” said he to the peasant guide, “lead us to Shámshevo.”
Denísov, Pétya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and the hussar
who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to the edge of the forest.
CHAPTER V
The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from the trees.
Denísov, the esaul, and Pétya rode silently, following the peasant in the knitted
cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes and moving noiselessly in his bast
shoes over the roots and wet leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.
He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to where
the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree that had not yet
shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to them with his hand.
Denísov and Pétya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant was
standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a
downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep ravine,
was a small village and a landowner’s house with a broken roof. In the village, in
the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond, over all the rising ground, and
all along the road uphill from the bridge leading to the village, not more than
five hundred yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering
mist. Their un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining uphill with
the carts, and their calls to one another, could be clearly heard.
“Bwing the prisoner here,” said Denísov in a low voice, not taking his eyes off
the French.
A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Denísov.
Pointing to the French troops, Denísov asked him what these and those of them
were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and lifting his eyebrows,
looked at Denísov in affright, but in spite of an evident desire to say all he knew
gave confused answers, merely assenting to everything Denísov asked him.
Denísov turned away from him frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his
own conjectures to him.
Pétya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now at
Denísov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village and along the
road, trying not to miss anything of importance.
“Whether Dólokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?” said Denísov with a
merry sparkle in his eyes.
“It is a very suitable spot,” said the esaul.
“We’ll send the infantwy down by the swamps,” Denísov continued. “They’ll
cweep up to the garden; you’ll wide up fwom there with the Cossacks”—he
pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village—“and I with my hussars fwom
here. And at the signal shot...”
“The hollow is impassable—there’s a swamp there,” said the esaul. “The
horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left....”
While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded from the
low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then another, and the
sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices shouting together came up
from the slope. For a moment Denísov and the esaul drew back. They were so
near that they thought they were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the
firing and shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing
something red was running through the marsh. The French were evidently firing
and shouting at him.
“Why, that’s our Tíkhon,” said the esaul.
“So it is! It is!”
“The wascal!” said Denísov.
“He’ll get away!” said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.
The man whom they called Tíkhon, having run to the stream, plunged in so
that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared for an instant,
scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on. The French who
had been pursuing him stopped.
“Smart, that!” said the esaul.
“What a beast!” said Denísov with his former look of vexation. “What has he
been doing all this time?”
“Who is he?” asked Pétya.
“He’s our plastún. I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’”
“Oh, yes,” said Pétya, nodding at the first words Denísov uttered as if he
understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of it.
Tíkhon Shcherbáty was one of the most indispensable men in their band. He
was a peasant from Pokróvsk, near the river Gzhat. When Denísov had come to
Pokróvsk at the beginning of his operations and had as usual summoned the
village elder and asked him what he knew about the French, the elder, as though
shielding himself, had replied, as all village elders did, that he had neither seen
nor heard anything of them. But when Denísov explained that his purpose was to
kill the French, and asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied
that some “more-orderers” had really been at their village, but that Tíkhon
Shcherbáty was the only man who dealt with such matters. Denísov had Tíkhon
called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words in the elder’s
presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country and the hatred of the French
that all sons of the fatherland should cherish.
“We don’t do the French any harm,” said Tíkhon, evidently frightened by
Denísov’s words. “We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you know! We
killed a score or so of ‘more-orderers,’ but we did no harm else....”
Next day when Denísov had left Pokróvsk, having quite forgotten about this
peasant, it was reported to him that Tíkhon had attached himself to their party
and asked to be allowed to remain with it. Denísov gave orders to let him do so.
Tíkhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water, flaying
dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude for partisan
warfare. At night he would go out for booty and always brought back French
clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring in French captives also.
Denísov then relieved him from drudgery and began taking him with him when
he went out on expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks.
Tíkhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging behind the
cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried rather as a joke), a
pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf uses its teeth, with equal ease
picking fleas out of its fur or crunching thick bones. Tíkhon with equal accuracy
would split logs with blows at arm’s length, or holding the head of the ax would
cut thin little pegs or carve spoons. In Denísov’s party he held a peculiar and
exceptional position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be
done—to push a cart out of the mud with one’s shoulders, pull a horse out of a
swamp by its tail, skin it, slink in among the French, or walk more than thirty
miles in a day—everybody pointed laughingly at Tíkhon.
“It won’t hurt that devil—he’s as strong as a horse!” they said of him.
Once a Frenchman Tíkhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him and shot
him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tíkhon treated only with
internal and external applications of vodka) was the subject of the liveliest jokes
by the whole detachment—jokes in which Tíkhon readily joined.
“Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?” the Cossacks would banter
him. And Tíkhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended to be angry
and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only effect of this incident
on Tíkhon was that after being wounded he seldom brought in prisoners.
He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found more
opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen, and
consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars and
willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by Denísov overnight to
Shámshevo to capture a “tongue.” But whether because he had not been content
to take only one Frenchman or because he had slept through the night, he had
crept by day into some bushes right among the French and, as Denísov had
witnessed from above, had been detected by them.
CHAPTER VI
After talking for some time with the esaul about next day’s attack, which now,
seeing how near they were to the French, he seemed to have definitely decided
on, Denísov turned his horse and rode back.
“Now, my lad, we’ll go and get dwy,” he said to Pétya.
As they approached the watchhouse Denísov stopped, peering into the forest.
Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging arms, wearing a short
jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazán hat, was approaching with long, light steps. He
had a musketoon over his shoulder and an ax stuck in his girdle. When he espied
Denísov he hastily threw something into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by
its floppy brim, and approached his commander. It was Tíkhon. His wrinkled
and pockmarked face and narrow little eyes beamed with self-satisfied
merriment. He lifted his head high and gazed at Denísov as if repressing a laugh.
“Well, where did you disappear to?” inquired Denísov.
“Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen,” answered Tíkhon boldly
and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.
“Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well, why haven’t
you taken one?”
“Oh, I took one all right,” said Tíkhon.
“Where is he?”
“You see, I took him first thing at dawn,” Tíkhon continued, spreading out his
flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes. “I took him into the forest. Then
I see he’s no good and think I’ll go and fetch a likelier one.”
“You see?... What a wogue—it’s just as I thought,” said Denísov to the esaul.
“Why didn’t you bwing that one?”
“What was the good of bringing him?” Tíkhon interrupted hastily and angrily
—“that one wouldn’t have done for you. As if I don’t know what sort you
want!”
“What a bwute you are!... Well?”
“I went for another one,” Tíkhon continued, “and I crept like this through the
wood and lay down.” (He suddenly lay down on his stomach with a supple
movement to show how he had done it.) “One turned up and I grabbed him, like
this.” (He jumped up quickly and lightly.) “‘Come along to the colonel,’ I said.
He starts yelling, and suddenly there were four of them. They rushed at me with
their little swords. So I went for them with my ax, this way: ‘What are you up
to?’ says I. ‘Christ be with you!’” shouted Tíkhon, waving his arms with an
angry scowl and throwing out his chest.
“Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the puddles!”
said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.
Pétya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained from laughing.
He turned his eyes rapidly from Tíkhon’s face to the esaul’s and Denísov’s,
unable to make out what it all meant.
“Don’t play the fool!” said Denísov, coughing angrily. “Why didn’t you bwing
the first one?”
Tíkhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other, then
suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin, disclosing a gap
where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called Shcherbáty—the gap-
toothed). Denísov smiled, and Pétya burst into a peal of merry laughter in which
Tíkhon himself joined.
“Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing,” said Tíkhon. “The clothes on
him—poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your honor! Why, he
says: ‘I’m a general’s son myself, I won’t go!’ he says.”
“You are a bwute!” said Denísov. “I wanted to question...”
“But I questioned him,” said Tíkhon. “He said he didn’t know much. ‘There
are a lot of us,’ he says, ‘but all poor stuff—only soldiers in name,’ he says.
‘Shout loud at them,’ he says, ‘and you’ll take them all,’” Tíkhon concluded,
looking cheerfully and resolutely into Denísov’s eyes.
“I’ll give you a hundwed sharp lashes—that’ll teach you to play the fool!”
said Denísov severely.
“But why are you angry?” remonstrated Tíkhon, “just as if I’d never seen your
Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I’ll fetch you any of them you want—
three if you like.”
“Well, let’s go,” said Denísov, and rode all the way to the watchhouse in
silence and frowning angrily.
Tíkhon followed behind and Pétya heard the Cossacks laughing with him and
at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the bushes.
When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tíkhon’s words and smile had
passed and Pétya realized for a moment that this Tíkhon had killed a man, he felt
uneasy. He looked round at the captive drummer boy and felt a pang in his heart.
But this uneasiness lasted only a moment. He felt it necessary to hold his head
higher, to brace himself, and to question the esaul with an air of importance
about tomorrow’s undertaking, that he might not be unworthy of the company in
which he found himself.
The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denísov on the way with the
news that Dólokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.
Denísov at once cheered up and, calling Pétya to him, said: “Well, tell me
about yourself.”
CHAPTER VII
Pétya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow, joined his
regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general commanding a large
guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his commission, and especially
since he had joined the active army and taken part in the battle of Vyázma, Pétya
had been in a constant state of blissful excitement at being grown-up and in a
perpetual ecstatic hurry not to miss any chance to do something really heroic. He
was highly delighted with what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the
same time it always seemed to him that the really heroic exploits were being
performed just where he did not happen to be. And he was always in a hurry to
get where he was not.
When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish to send
somebody to Denísov’s detachment, Pétya begged so piteously to be sent that the
general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled Pétya’s mad
action at the battle of Vyázma, where instead of riding by the road to the place to
which he had been sent, he had galloped to the advanced line under the fire of
the French and had there twice fired his pistol. So now the general explicitly
forbade his taking part in any action whatever of Denísov’s. That was why Pétya
had blushed and grown confused when Denísov asked him whether he could
stay. Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest Pétya had considered he
must carry out his instructions strictly and return at once. But when he saw the
French and saw Tíkhon and learned that there would certainly be an attack that
night, he decided, with the rapidity with which young people change their views,
that the general, whom he had greatly respected till then, was a rubbishy
German, that Denísov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tíkhon a hero too, and
that it would be shameful for him to leave them at a moment of difficulty.
It was already growing dusk when Denísov, Pétya, and the esaul rode up to
the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be seen, and Cossacks and
hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the glade and were kindling glowing
fires in a hollow of the forest where the French could not see the smoke. In the
passage of the small watchhouse a Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping
some mutton. In the room three officers of Denísov’s band were converting a
door into a tabletop. Pétya took off his wet clothes, gave them to be dried, and at
once began helping the officers to fix up the dinner table.
In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the table
were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.
Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton with his
hands, down which the grease trickled, Pétya was in an ecstatic childish state of
love for all men, and consequently of confidence that others loved him in the
same way.
“So then what do you think, Vasíli Dmítrich?” said he to Denísov. “It’s all
right my staying a day with you?” And not waiting for a reply he answered his
own question: “You see I was told to find out—well, I am finding out.... Only do
let me into the very... into the chief... I don’t want a reward.... But I want...”
Pétya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head and
flourishing his arms.
“Into the vewy chief...” Denísov repeated with a smile.
“Only, please let me command something, so that I may really command...”
Pétya went on. “What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a knife?” he said,
turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a piece of mutton.
And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.
“Please keep it. I have several like it,” said Pétya, blushing. “Heavens! I was
quite forgetting!” he suddenly cried. “I have some raisins, fine ones; you know,
seedless ones. We have a new sutler and he has such capital things. I bought ten
pounds. I am used to something sweet. Would you like some?...” and Pétya ran
out into the passage to his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained
about five pounds of raisins. “Have some, gentlemen, have some!”
“You want a coffeepot, don’t you?” he asked the esaul. “I bought a capital one
from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he’s very honest, that’s the chief
thing. I’ll be sure to send it to you. Or perhaps your flints are giving out, or are
worn out—that happens sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me,
here they are”—and he showed a bag—“a hundred flints. I bought them very
cheap. Please take as many as you want, or all if you like....”
Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Pétya stopped and
blushed.
He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that was foolish.
And running over the events of the day he remembered the French drummer boy.
“It’s capital for us here, but what of him? Where have they put him? Have they
fed him? Haven’t they hurt his feelings?” he thought. But having caught himself
saying too much about the flints, he was now afraid to speak out.
“I might ask,” he thought, “but they’ll say: ‘He’s a boy himself and so he
pities the boy.’ I’ll show them tomorrow whether I’m a boy. Will it seem odd if I
ask?” Pétya thought. “Well, never mind!” and immediately, blushing and looking
anxiously at the officers to see if they appeared ironical, he said:
“May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him something to
eat?... Perhaps...”
“Yes, he’s a poor little fellow,” said Denísov, who evidently saw nothing
shameful in this reminder. “Call him in. His name is Vincent Bosse. Have him
fetched.”
“I’ll call him,” said Pétya.
“Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow,” Denísov repeated.
Pétya was standing at the door when Denísov said this. He slipped in between
the officers, came close to Denísov, and said:
“Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!”
And having kissed Denísov he ran out of the hut.
“Bosse! Vincent!” Pétya cried, stopping outside the door.
“Who do you want, sir?” asked a voice in the darkness.
Pétya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured that day.
“Ah, Vesénny?” said a Cossack.
Vincent, the boy’s name, had already been changed by the Cossacks into
Vesénny (vernal) and into Vesénya by the peasants and soldiers. In both these
adaptations the reference to spring (vesná) matched the impression made by the
young lad.
“He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesénya! Vesénya!—
Vesénny!” laughing voices were heard calling to one another in the darkness.
“He’s a smart lad,” said an hussar standing near Pétya. “We gave him
something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!”
The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the darkness,
and the drummer boy came to the door.
“Ah, c’est vous!” said Pétya. “Voulez-vous manger? N’ayez pas peur, on ne
vous fera pas de mal,” * he added shyly and affectionately, touching the boy’s
hand. “Entrez, entrez.” *(2)
* “Ah, it’s you! Do you want something to eat? Don’t be
afraid, they won’t hurt you.”
There were many things Pétya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but did not
dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then in the darkness he
took the boy’s hand and pressed it.
“Come in, come in!” he repeated in a gentle whisper. “Oh, what can I do for
him?” he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in first.
When the boy had entered the hut, Pétya sat down at a distance from him,
considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to him. But he fingered the
money in his pocket and wondered whether it would seem ridiculous to give
some to the drummer boy.
CHAPTER VIII
The arrival of Dólokhov diverted Pétya’s attention from the drummer boy, to
whom Denísov had had some mutton and vodka given, and whom he had had
dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept with their band and not sent
away with the other prisoners. Pétya had heard in the army many stories of
Dólokhov’s extraordinary bravery and of his cruelty to the French, so from the
moment he entered the hut Pétya did not take his eyes from him, but braced
himself up more and more and held his head high, that he might not be unworthy
even of such company.
Dólokhov’s appearance amazed Pétya by its simplicity.
Denísov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas the
Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and everything he did
indicated his unusual position. But Dólokhov, who in Moscow had worn a
Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most correct officer of the Guards.
He was clean-shaven and wore a Guardsman’s padded coat with an Order of St.
George at his buttonhole and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took
off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting anyone went
up to Denísov and began questioning him about the matter in hand. Denísov told
him of the designs the large detachments had on the transport, of the message
Pétya had brought, and his own replies to both generals. Then he told him all he
knew of the French detachment.
“That’s so. But we must know what troops they are and their numbers,” said
Dólokhov. “It will be necessary to go there. We can’t start the affair without
knowing for certain how many there are. I like to work accurately. Here now—
wouldn’t one of these gentlemen like to ride over to the French camp with me? I
have brought a spare uniform.”
“I, I... I’ll go with you!” cried Pétya.
“There’s no need for you to go at all,” said Denísov, addressing Dólokhov,
“and as for him, I won’t let him go on any account.”
“I like that!” exclaimed Pétya. “Why shouldn’t I go?”
“Because it’s useless.”
“Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and that’s all.
You’ll take me, won’t you?” he said, turning to Dólokhov.
“Why not?” Dólokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of the French
drummer boy. “Have you had that youngster with you long?” he asked Denísov.
“He was taken today but he knows nothing. I’m keeping him with me.”
“Yes, and where do you put the others?” inquired Dólokhov.
“Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them,” shouted Denísov,
suddenly flushing. “And I say boldly that I have not a single man’s life on my
conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send thirty or thwee hundwed men to
town under escort, instead of staining—I speak bluntly—staining the honor of a
soldier?”
“That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count of
sixteen,” said Dólokhov with cold irony, “but it’s time for you to drop it.”
“Why, I’ve not said anything! I only say that I’ll certainly go with you,” said
Pétya shyly.
“But for you and me, old fellow, it’s time to drop these amenities,” continued
Dólokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking of this subject which
irritated Denísov. “Now, why have you kept this lad?” he went on, swaying his
head. “Because you are sorry for him! Don’t we know those ‘receipts’ of yours?
You send a hundred men away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or get
killed. So isn’t it all the same not to send them?”
The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.
“That’s not the point. I’m not going to discuss the matter. I do not wish to take
it on my conscience. You say they’ll die. All wight. Only not by my fault!”
Dólokhov began laughing.
“Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if they did
catch me they’d string me up to an aspen tree, and with all your chivalry just the
same.” He paused. “However, we must get to work. Tell the Cossack to fetch my
kit. I have two French uniforms in it. Well, are you coming with me?” he asked
Pétya.
“I? Yes, yes, certainly!” cried Pétya, blushing almost to tears and glancing at
Denísov.
While Dólokhov had been disputing with Denísov what should be done with
prisoners, Pétya had once more felt awkward and restless; but again he had no
time to grasp fully what they were talking about. “If grown-up, distinguished
men think so, it must be necessary and right,” thought he. “But above all
Denísov must not dare to imagine that I’ll obey him and that he can order me
about. I will certainly go to the French camp with Dólokhov. If he can, so can I!”
And to all Denísov’s persuasions, Pétya replied that he too was accustomed to
do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that he never considered
personal danger.
“For you’ll admit that if we don’t know for sure how many of them there are...
hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are only two of us. Besides, I
want to go very much and certainly will go, so don’t hinder me,” said he. “It will
only make things worse....”
CHAPTER IX
Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Pétya and Dólokhov rode to the
clearing from which Denísov had reconnoitered the French camp, and emerging
from the forest in pitch darkness they descended into the hollow. On reaching the
bottom, Dólokhov told the Cossacks accompanying him to await him there and
rode on at a quick trot along the road to the bridge. Pétya, his heart in his mouth
with excitement, rode by his side.
“If we’re caught, I won’t be taken alive! I have a pistol,” whispered he.
“Don’t talk Russian,” said Dólokhov in a hurried whisper, and at that very
moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: “Qui vive?” * and the
click of a musket.
* “Who goes there?”
“Mot d’ordre,” repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not replying.
“Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas le mot
d’ordre...” cried Dólokhov suddenly flaring up and riding straight at the sentinel.
“Je vous demande si le colonel est ici.” *
* “When an officer is making his round, sentinels don’t ask
him for the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is
here.”
And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped aside,
Dólokhov rode up the incline at a walk.
Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dólokhov stopped him
and inquired where the commander and officers were. The man, a soldier with a
sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up to Dólokhov’s horse, touched it
with his hand, and explained simply and in a friendly way that the commander
and the officers were higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm,
as he called the landowner’s house.
Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk could be heard
around the campfires, Dólokhov turned into the courtyard of the landowner’s
house. Having ridden in, he dismounted and approached a big blazing campfire,
around which sat several men talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small
cauldron at the edge of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat,
lit up by the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.
“Oh, he’s a hard nut to crack,” said one of the officers who was sitting in the
shadow at the other side of the fire.
“He’ll make them get a move on, those fellows!” said another, laughing.
Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of Dólokhov’s
and Pétya’s steps as they advanced to the fire leading their horses.
“Bonjour, messieurs!” * said Dólokhov loudly and clearly.
* “Good day, gentlemen.”
There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire, and one
tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up to Dólokhov.
“Is that you, Clément?” he asked. “Where the devil...?” But, noticing his
mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dólokhov as a stranger,
asking what he could do for him.
Dólokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake their
regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether they knew
anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything, and Pétya thought
the officers were beginning to look at him and Dólokhov with hostility and
suspicion. For some seconds all were silent.
“If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too late,” said a
voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.
Dólokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on farther that
night.
He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot and squatted
down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the long neck. That officer
did not take his eyes from Dólokhov and again asked to what regiment he
belonged. Dólokhov, as if he had not heard the question, did not reply, but
lighting a short French pipe which he took from his pocket began asking the
officer in how far the road before them was safe from Cossacks.
“Those brigands are everywhere,” replied an officer from behind the fire.
Dólokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers such as
his companion and himself, “but probably they would not dare to attack large
detachments?” he added inquiringly. No one replied.
“Well, now he’ll come away,” Pétya thought every moment as he stood by the
campfire listening to the talk.
But Dólokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and began
putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the battalion, how
many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about the Russian prisoners
with that detachment, Dólokhov said:
“A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would be better
to shoot such rabble,” and burst into loud laughter, so strange that Pétya thought
the French would immediately detect their disguise, and involuntarily took a step
back from the campfire.
No one replied a word to Dólokhov’s laughter, and a French officer whom
they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and whispered something
to a companion. Dólokhov got up and called to the soldier who was holding their
horses.
“Will they bring our horses or not?” thought Pétya, instinctively drawing
nearer to Dólokhov.
The horses were brought.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” said Dólokhov.
Pétya wished to say “Good night” but could not utter a word. The officers
were whispering together. Dólokhov was a long time mounting his horse which
would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at a footpace. Pétya rode
beside him, longing to look round to see whether or not the French were running
after them, but not daring to.
Coming out onto the road Dólokhov did not ride back across the open country,
but through the village. At one spot he stopped and listened. “Do you hear?” he
asked. Pétya recognized the sound of Russian voices and saw the dark figures of
Russian prisoners round their campfires. When they had descended to the bridge
Pétya and Dólokhov rode past the sentinel, who without saying a word paced
morosely up and down it, then they descended into the hollow where the
Cossacks awaited them.
“Well now, good-by. Tell Denísov, ‘at the first shot at daybreak,’” said
Dólokhov and was about to ride away, but Pétya seized hold of him.
“Really!” he cried, “you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how splendid! How I
love you!”
“All right, all right!” said Dólokhov. But Pétya did not let go of him and
Dólokhov saw through the gloom that Pétya was bending toward him and
wanted to kiss him. Dólokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his horse, and
vanished into the darkness.
CHAPTER X
Having returned to the watchman’s hut, Pétya found Denísov in the passage.
He was awaiting Pétya’s return in a state of agitation, anxiety, and self-reproach
for having let him go.
“Thank God!” he exclaimed. “Yes, thank God!” he repeated, listening to
Pétya’s rapturous account. “But, devil take you, I haven’t slept because of you!
Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can still get a nap before morning.”
“But... no,” said Pétya, “I don’t want to sleep yet. Besides I know myself, if I
fall asleep it’s finished. And then I am used to not sleeping before a battle.”
He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his expedition and
vividly picturing to himself what would happen next day.
Then, noticing that Denísov was asleep, he rose and went out of doors.
It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were still falling
from the trees. Near the watchman’s hut the black shapes of the Cossacks’
shanties and of horses tethered together could be seen. Behind the hut the dark
shapes of the two wagons with their horses beside them were discernible, and in
the hollow the dying campfire gleamed red. Not all the Cossacks and hussars
were asleep; here and there, amid the sounds of falling drops and the munching
of the horses near by, could be heard low voices which seemed to be whispering.
Pétya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.
Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses
munching their oats. In the dark Pétya recognized his own horse, which he called
“Karabákh” though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to it.
“Well, Karabákh! We’ll do some service tomorrow,” said he, sniffing its
nostrils and kissing it.
“Why aren’t you asleep, sir?” said a Cossack who was sitting under a wagon.
“No, ah... Likhachëv—isn’t that your name? Do you know I have only just
come back! We’ve been into the French camp.”
And Pétya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride but also of
his object, and why he considered it better to risk his life than to act “just
anyhow.”
“Well, you should get some sleep now,” said the Cossack.
“No, I am used to this,” said Pétya. “I say, aren’t the flints in your pistols worn
out? I brought some with me. Don’t you want any? You can have some.”
The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look at Pétya.
“Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately,” said Pétya. “Some
fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and then they’re sorry for it
afterwards. I don’t like that.”
“Just so,” said the Cossack.
“Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen my saber for
me? It’s got bl...” (Pétya feared to tell a lie, and the saber never had been
sharpened.) “Can you do it?”
“Of course I can.”
Likhachëv got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Pétya heard the warlike
sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat on its edge. The
Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.
“I say! Are the lads asleep?” asked Pétya.
“Some are, and some aren’t—like us.”
“Well, and that boy?”
“Vesénny? Oh, he’s thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast asleep
after his fright. He was that glad!”
After that Pétya remained silent for a long time, listening to the sounds. He
heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure appeared.
“What are you sharpening?” asked a man coming up to the wagon.
“Why, this gentleman’s saber.”
“That’s right,” said the man, whom Pétya took to be an hussar. “Was the cup
left here?”
“There, by the wheel!”
The hussar took the cup.
“It must be daylight soon,” said he, yawning, and went away.
Pétya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denísov’s guerrilla
band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon captured from the
French beside which horses were tethered, that under it Likhachëv was sitting
sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark blotch to the right was the
watchman’s hut, and the red blotch below to the left was the dying embers of a
campfire, that the man who had come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a
drink; but he neither knew nor waited to know anything of all this. He was in a
fairy kingdom where nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really
be the watchman’s hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very depths of the
earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be the eye of an enormous
monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a wagon, but it might very well be that
he was not sitting on a wagon but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell,
he would have to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go on falling and
never reach the bottom. Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachëv, who was
sitting under the wagon, but it might be the kindest, bravest, most wonderful,
most splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of. It might really have
been that the hussar came for water and went back into the hollow, but perhaps
he had simply vanished—disappeared altogether and dissolved into nothingness.
Nothing Pétya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was in a
fairy kingdom where everything was possible.
He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was
clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling
the stars. Sometimes it looked as if the clouds were passing, and a clear black
sky appeared. Sometimes it seemed as if the black spaces were clouds.
Sometimes the sky seemed to be rising high, high overhead, and then it seemed
to sink so low that one could touch it with one’s hand.
Pétya’s eyes began to close and he swayed a little.
The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed and
jostled one another. Someone snored.
“Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg...” hissed the saber against the whetstone, and
suddenly Pétya heard an harmonious orchestra playing some unknown, sweetly
solemn hymn. Pétya was as musical as Natásha and more so than Nicholas, but
had never learned music or thought about it, and so the melody that
unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him particularly fresh and attractive.
The music became more and more audible. The melody grew and passed from
one instrument to another. And what was played was a fugue—though Pétya had
not the least conception of what a fugue is. Each instrument—now resembling a
violin and now a horn, but better and clearer than violin or horn—played its own
part, and before it had finished the melody merged with another instrument that
began almost the same air, and then with a third and a fourth; and they all
blended into one and again became separate and again blended, now into solemn
church music, now into something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.
“Oh—why, that was in a dream!” Pétya said to himself, as he lurched forward.
“It’s in my ears. But perhaps it’s music of my own. Well, go on, my music!
Now!...”
He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance, sounds fluttered,
grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again all mingled into the same
sweet and solemn hymn. “Oh, this is delightful! As much as I like and as I like!”
said Pétya to himself. He tried to conduct that enormous orchestra.
“Now softly, softly die away!” and the sounds obeyed him. “Now fuller, more
joyful. Still more and more joyful!” And from an unknown depth rose
increasingly triumphant sounds. “Now voices join in!” ordered Pétya. And at
first from afar he heard men’s voices and then women’s. The voices grew in
harmonious triumphant strength, and Pétya listened to their surpassing beauty in
awe and joy.
With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from the trees,
and the hissing of the saber, “Ozheg-zheg-zheg...” and again the horses jostled
one another and neighed, not disturbing the choir but joining in it.
Pétya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all the time,
wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no one to share it. He
was awakened by Likhachëv’s kindly voice.
“It’s ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!”
Pétya woke up.
“It’s getting light, it’s really getting light!” he exclaimed.
The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to their very
tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare branches. Pétya shook
himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it to Likhachëv; then
he flourished the saber, tested it, and sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying
their horses and tightening their saddle girths.
“And here’s the commander,” said Likhachëv.
Denísov came out of the watchman’s hut and, having called Pétya, gave orders
to get ready.
CHAPTER XI
The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, tightened their
saddle girths, and formed companies. Denísov stood by the watchman’s hut
giving final orders. The infantry of the detachment passed along the road and
quickly disappeared amid the trees in the mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet
splashing through the mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Pétya held
his horse by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face, having
been bathed in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were particularly brilliant.
Cold shivers ran down his spine and his whole body pulsed rhythmically.
“Well, is ev’wything weady?” asked Denísov. “Bwing the horses.”
The horses were brought. Denísov was angry with the Cossack because the
saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted. Pétya put his foot in
the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to nip his leg, but Pétya leaped quickly
into the saddle unconscious of his own weight and, turning to look at the hussars
starting in the darkness behind him, rode up to Denísov.
“Vasíli Dmítrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for God’s
sake...!” said he.
Denísov seemed to have forgotten Pétya’s very existence. He turned to glance
at him.
“I ask one thing of you,” he said sternly, “to obey me and not shove yourself
forward anywhere.”
He did not say another word to Pétya but rode in silence all the way. When
they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably growing light over the
field. Denísov talked in whispers with the esaul and the Cossacks rode past
Pétya and Denísov. When they had all ridden by, Denísov touched his horse and
rode down the hill. Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses
descended with their riders into the ravine. Pétya rode beside Denísov, the
pulsation of his body constantly increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter, but
the mist still hid distant objects. Having reached the valley, Denísov looked back
and nodded to a Cossack beside him.
“The signal!” said he.
The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the tramp of
horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from various sides, and then
more shots.
At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Pétya lashed his horse and
loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denísov who shouted at him. It
seemed to Pétya that at the moment the shot was fired it suddenly became as
bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge. Cossacks were galloping along the
road in front of him. On the bridge he collided with a Cossack who had fallen
behind, but he galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were
running from right to left across the road. One of them fell in the mud under his
horse’s feet.
Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the midst of
that crowd terrible screams arose. Pétya galloped up, and the first thing he saw
was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman, clutching the handle of a
lance that had been aimed at him.
“Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!” shouted Pétya, and giving rein to his excited horse
he galloped forward along the village street.
He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged Russian
prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road, were shouting
something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking Frenchman, in a blue
overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red face, had been defending himself
against the hussars. When Pétya galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen.
“Too late again!” flashed through Pétya’s mind and he galloped on to the place
from which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard of the
landowner’s house he had visited the night before with Dólokhov. The French
were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden thickly overgrown
with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who crowded at the gateway.
Through the smoke, as he approached the gate, Pétya saw Dólokhov, whose face
was of a pale-greenish tint, shouting to his men. “Go round! Wait for the
infantry!” he exclaimed as Pétya rode up to him.
“Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!” shouted Pétya, and without pausing a moment
galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the smoke
was thickest.
A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others plashed
against something. The Cossacks and Dólokhov galloped after Pétya into the
gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke some of the French
threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes to meet the Cossacks, while
others ran down the hill toward the pond. Pétya was galloping along the
courtyard, but instead of holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly
and strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle. His horse,
having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering in the morning light,
stopped suddenly, and Pétya fell heavily on to the wet ground. The Cossacks saw
that his arms and legs jerked rapidly though his head was quite motionless. A
bullet had pierced his skull.
After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the house with a
white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that they surrendered,
Dólokhov dismounted and went up to Pétya, who lay motionless with
outstretched arms.
“Done for!” he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet Denísov who
was riding toward him.
“Killed?” cried Denísov, recognizing from a distance the unmistakably lifeless
attitude—very familiar to him—in which Pétya’s body was lying.
“Done for!” repeated Dólokhov as if the utterance of these words afforded
him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who were surrounded by
Cossacks who had hurried up. “We won’t take them!” he called out to Denísov.
Denísov did not reply; he rode up to Pétya, dismounted, and with trembling
hands turned toward himself the bloodstained, mud-bespattered face which had
already gone white.
“I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!” he recalled
Pétya’s words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise at the sound, like the
yelp of a dog, with which Denísov turned away, walked to the wattle fence, and
seized hold of it.
Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denísov and Dólokhov was Pierre
Bezúkhov.
CHAPTER XII
During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been
issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners among whom
was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party was no longer with the
same troops and baggage trains with which it had left Moscow. Half the wagons
laden with hardtack that had traveled the first stages with them had been
captured by Cossacks, the other half had gone on ahead. Not one of those
dismounted cavalrymen who had marched in front of the prisoners was left; they
had all disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them during
the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot’s enormous baggage train,
convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a cavalry baggage train.
From Vyázma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in three
columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder that Pierre had
noticed at their first halting place after leaving Moscow had now reached the
utmost limit.
The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead horses;
ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments continually changed
about, now joining the moving column, now again lagging behind it.
Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the soldiers of
the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run headlong, crushing one
another, but had afterwards reassembled and abused each other for their
causeless panic.
These three groups traveling together—the cavalry stores, the convoy of
prisoners, and Junot’s baggage train—still constituted a separate and united
whole, though each of the groups was rapidly melting away.
Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred and twenty
wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been captured or left
behind. Some of Junot’s wagons also had been captured or abandoned. Three
wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers from Davout’s corps. From the
talk of the Germans Pierre learned that a larger guard had been allotted to that
baggage train than to the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German
soldier, had been shot by the marshal’s own order because a silver spoon
belonging to the marshal had been found in his possession.
The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three hundred and
thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a hundred now remained.
The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort than even the cavalry saddles
or Junot’s baggage. They understood that the saddles and Junot’s spoon might be
of some use, but that cold and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard
equally cold and hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in
which case the order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but
revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition they themselves
were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the prisoners and so rendering
their own plight still worse, treated them with particular moroseness and
severity.
At Dorogobúzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the prisoners in
a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores, several of the soldier prisoners
tunneled under the wall and ran away, but were recaptured by the French and
shot.
The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer prisoners should
be kept separate from the rest, had long since been abandoned. All who could
walk went together, and after the third stage Pierre had rejoined Karatáev and the
gray-blue bandy-legged dog that had chosen Karatáev for its master.
On the third day after leaving Moscow Karatáev again fell ill with the fever he
had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he grew gradually weaker
Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know why, but since Karatáev had
begun to grow weaker it had cost him an effort to go near him. When he did so
and heard the subdued moaning with which Karatáev generally lay down at the
halting places, and when he smelled the odor emanating from him which was
now stronger than before, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about
him.
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with
his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is
within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness
arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three
weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth—that
nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in
which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he
need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have
their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed
of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the
bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the other was warming; and
that when he had put on tight dancing shoes he had suffered just as he did now
when he walked with bare feet that were covered with sores—his footgear
having long since fallen to pieces. He discovered that when he had married his
wife—of his own free will as it had seemed to him—he had been no more free
than now when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself
subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he scarcely felt, the
worst was the state of his bare, raw, and scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was
appetizing and nourishing, the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used
instead of salt was even pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm
walking in the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that
devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard to bear was
his feet.
After the second day’s march Pierre, having examined his feet by the
campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when everybody
got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up, walked without
feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more terrible to look at than
before. However, he did not look at them now, but thought of other things.
Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the saving
power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to another, which is like
the safety valve of a boiler that allows superfluous steam to blow off when the
pressure exceeds a certain limit.
He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who lagged
behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did not think of
Karatáev who grew weaker every day and evidently would soon have to share
that fate. Still less did Pierre think about himself. The harder his position became
and the more terrible the future, the more independent of that position in which
he found himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and
imaginings that came to him.
CHAPTER XIII
At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill along the
muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the roughness of the way.
Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd around him and then again at his
feet. The former and the latter were alike familiar and his own. The blue-gray
bandy legged dog ran merrily along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of
its agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along on three,
and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at the crows that sat on the
carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around
lay the flesh of different animals—from men to horses—in various stages of
decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog
could eat all it wanted.
It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment it
might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began raining harder than
before. The saturated road no longer absorbed the water, which ran along the ruts
in streams.
Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps in threes,
and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally addressing the rain, he repeated:
“Now then, now then, go on! Pelt harder!”
It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and deep
within him his soul was occupied with something important and comforting.
This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction from a conversation with
Karatáev the day before.
At their yesterday’s halting place, feeling chilly by a dying campfire, Pierre
had got up and gone to the next one, which was burning better. There Platón
Karatáev was sitting covered up—head and all—with his greatcoat as if it were a
vestment, telling the soldiers in his effective and pleasant though now feeble
voice a story Pierre knew. It was already past midnight, the hour when Karatáev
was usually free of his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the fire
and heard Platón’s voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his pathetic face brightly
lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at his heart. His feeling of pity for this
man frightened him and he wished to go away, but there was no other fire, and
Pierre sat down, trying not to look at Platón.
“Well, how are you?” he asked.
“How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won’t grant us death,” replied
Platón, and at once resumed the story he had begun.
“And so, brother,” he continued, with a smile on his pale emaciated face and a
particularly happy light in his eyes, “you see, brother...”
Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karatáev had told it to him alone
some half-dozen times and always with a specially joyful emotion. But well as
he knew it, Pierre now listened to that tale as to something new, and the quiet
rapture Karatáev evidently felt as he told it communicated itself also to Pierre.
The story was of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with his
family, and who went once to the Nízhni fair with a companion—a rich
merchant.
Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning his
companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained knife was
found under the old merchant’s pillow. He was tried, knouted, and his nostrils
having been torn off, “all in due form” as Karatáev put it, he was sent to hard
labor in Siberia.
“And so, brother” (it was at this point that Pierre came up), “ten years or more
passed by. The old man was living as a convict, submitting as he should and
doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God for death. Well, one night the convicts
were gathered just as we are, with the old man among them. And they began
telling what each was suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One
told how he had taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house on
fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had done nothing. So they
asked the old man: ‘What are you being punished for, Daddy?’—‘I, my dear
brothers,’ said he, ‘am being punished for my own and other men’s sins. But I
have not killed anyone or taken anything that was not mine, but have only
helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant, my dear brothers, and had much
property. ‘And he went on to tell them all about it in due order. ‘I don’t grieve
for myself,’ he says, ‘God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my
old wife and the children,’ and the old man began to weep. Now it happened that
in the group was the very man who had killed the other merchant. ‘Where did it
happen, Daddy?’ he said. ‘When, and in what month?’ He asked all about it and
his heart began to ache. So he comes up to the old man like this, and falls down
at his feet! ‘You are perishing because of me, Daddy,’ he says. ‘It’s quite true,
lads, that this man,’ he says, ‘is being tortured innocently and for nothing! I,’ he
says, ‘did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you were asleep.
Forgive me, Daddy,’ he says, ‘for Christ’s sake!’”
Karatáev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and he drew the
logs together.
“And the old man said, ‘God will forgive you, we are all sinners in His sight. I
suffer for my own sins,’ and he wept bitter tears. Well, and what do you think,
dear friends?” Karatáev continued, his face brightening more and more with a
rapturous smile as if what he now had to tell contained the chief charm and the
whole meaning of his story: “What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer
confessed to the authorities. ‘I have taken six lives,’ he says (he was a great
sinner), ‘but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don’t let him suffer
because of me.’ So he confessed and it was all written down and the papers sent
off in due form. The place was a long way off, and while they were judging,
what with one thing and another, filling in the papers all in due form—the
authorities I mean—time passed. The affair reached the Tsar. After a while the
Tsar’s decree came: to set the merchant free and give him a compensation that
had been awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the old man.
‘Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A paper
has come from the Tsar!’ so they began looking for him,” here Karatáev’s lower
jaw trembled, “but God had already forgiven him—he was dead! That’s how it
was, dear fellows!” Karatáev concluded and sat for a long time silent, gazing
before him with a smile.
And Pierre’s soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story itself but by its
mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that lit up Karatáev’s face as he
told it, and the mystic significance of that joy.
CHAPTER XIV
“À vos places!” * suddenly cried a voice.
* “To your places.”
Denísov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some Cossacks
who were carrying the body of Pétya Rostóv to a hole that had been dug in the
garden.
CHAPTER XVI
After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight of the
French assumed a still more tragic character, with men freezing, or roasting
themselves to death at the campfires, while carriages with people dressed in furs
continued to drive past, carrying away the property that had been stolen by the
Emperor, kings, and dukes; but the process of the flight and disintegration of the
French army went on essentially as before.
From Moscow to Vyázma the French army of seventy-three thousand men not
reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but pillage) was
reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five thousand had fallen in
battle. From this beginning the succeeding terms of the progression could be
determined mathematically. The French army melted away and perished at the
same rate from Moscow to Vyázma, from Vyázma to Smolénsk, from Smolénsk
to the Berëzina, and from the Berëzina to Vílna—independently of the greater or
lesser intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any other
particular conditions. Beyond Vyázma the French army instead of moving in
three columns huddled together into one mass, and so went on to the end.
Berthier wrote to his Emperor (we know how far commanding officers allow
themselves to diverge from the truth in describing the condition of an army) and
this is what he said:
I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the various corps
I have had occasion to observe during different stages of the last two or three
days’ march. They are almost disbanded. Scarcely a quarter of the soldiers
remain with the standards of their regiments, the others go off by themselves in
different directions hoping to find food and escape discipline. In general they
regard Smolénsk as the place where they hope to recover. During the last few
days many of the men have been seen to throw away their cartridges and their
arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your ultimate plans may be, the interest
of Your Majesty’s service demands that the army should be rallied at Smolénsk
and should first of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted cavalry,
unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer in proportion to the
present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out with hunger and fatigue, need
these supplies as well as a few days’ rest. Many have died these last days on the
road or at the bivouacs. This state of things is continually becoming worse and
makes one fear that unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer
be under control in case of an engagement.
November 9: twenty miles from Smolénsk.
After staggering into Smolénsk which seemed to them a promised land, the
French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own stores, and when
everything had been plundered fled farther.
They all went without knowing whither or why they were going. Still less did
that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any orders to him. But still he
and those about him retained their old habits: wrote commands, letters, reports,
and orders of the day; called one another sire, mon cousin, prince d’Eckmühl, roi
de Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper, nothing
in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out, and though they
entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or Cousins, they all felt that they
were miserable wretches who had done much evil for which they had now to
pay. And though they pretended to be concerned about the army, each was
thinking only of himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself.
CHAPTER XVII
The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign from
Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian blindman’s
buff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them occasionally rings a
little bell to inform the catcher of his whereabouts. First he rings his bell
fearlessly, but when he gets into a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can,
and often thinking to escape runs straight into his opponent’s arms.
At first while they were still moving along the Kalúga road, Napoleon’s
armies made their presence known, but later when they reached the Smolénsk
road they ran holding the clapper of their bell tight—and often thinking they
were escaping ran right into the Russians.
Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit and the
consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of approximately
ascertaining the enemy’s position—by cavalry scouting—was not available.
Besides, as a result of the frequent and rapid change of position by each army,
even what information was obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was
received one day that the enemy had been in a certain position the day before, by
the third day when something could have been done, that army was already two
days’ march farther on and in quite another position.
One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolénsk there were several
different roads available for the French, and one would have thought that during
their stay of four days they might have learned where the enemy was, might
have arranged some more advantageous plan and undertaken something new.
But after a four days’ halt the mob, with no maneuvers or plans, again began
running along the beaten track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the
old—the worst—road, through Krásnoe and Orshá.
Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French separated in
their flight and spread out over a distance of twenty-four hours. In front of them
all fled the Emperor, then the kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, expecting
Napoleon to take the road to the right beyond the Dnieper—which was the only
reasonable thing for him to do—themselves turned to the right and came out
onto the highroad at Krásnoe. And here as in a game of blindman’s buff the
French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy unexpectedly the French fell
into confusion and stopped short from the sudden fright, but then they resumed
their flight, abandoning their comrades who were farther behind. Then for three
days separate portions of the French army—first Murat’s (the vice-king’s), then
Davout’s, and then Ney’s—ran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian army.
They abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage, their artillery,
and half their men, and fled, getting past the Russians by night by making
semicircles to the right.
Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of
Smolénsk which were in nobody’s way, because despite the unfortunate plight of
the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor against which they
had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of ten thousand men, reached
Napoleon at Orshá with only one thousand men left, having abandoned all the
rest and all his cannon, and having crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth at a
wooded spot.
From Orshá they fled farther along the road to Vílna, still playing at
blindman’s buff with the pursuing army. At the Berëzina they again became
disorganized, many were drowned and many surrendered, but those who got
across the river fled farther. Their supreme chief donned a fur coat and, having
seated himself in a sleigh, galloped on alone, abandoning his companions. The
others who could do so drove away too, leaving those who could not to
surrender or die.
CHAPTER XVIII
This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which they did all
they could to destroy themselves. From the time they turned onto the Kalúga
road to the day their leader fled from the army, none of the movements of the
crowd had any sense. So one might have thought that regarding this period of the
campaign the historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to the will of one
man, would have found it impossible to make the story of the retreat fit their
theory. But no! Mountains of books have been written by the historians about
this campaign, and everywhere are described Napoleon’s arrangements, the
maneuvers, and his profound plans which guided the army, as well as the
military genius shown by his marshals.
The retreat from Málo-Yaroslávets when he had a free road into a well-
supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along which Kutúzov
afterwards pursued him—this unnecessary retreat along a devastated road—is
explained to us as being due to profound considerations. Similarly profound
considerations are given for his retreat from Smolénsk to Orshá. Then his
heroism at Krásnoe is described, where he is reported to have been prepared to
accept battle and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch
stick and said:
“J’ai assez fait l’empereur; il est temps de faire le général,” * but
nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the scattered
fragments of the army he left behind.
* “I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act
the general.”
Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals, especially of Ney—
a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he made his way by night around
through the forest and across the Dnieper and escaped to Orshá, abandoning
standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his men.
And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic army is
presented to us by the historians as something great and characteristic of genius.
Even that final running away, described in ordinary language as the lowest depth
of baseness which every child is taught to be ashamed of—even that act finds
justification in the historians’ language.
When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical
ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity
calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of
“greatness.” “Greatness,” it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong.
For the “great” man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a “great”
man can be blamed.
“C’est grand!” * say the historians, and there no longer exists either good or
evil but only “grand” and “not grand.” Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand
is the characteristic, in their conception, of some special animals called “heroes.”
And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm fur coat and leaving to perish those
who were not merely his comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought
there, feels que c’est grand, *(2) and his soul is tranquil.
* “It is great.”
“Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n’y a qu’un
pas,” * said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been repeating:
“Sublime! Grand! Napoléon le Grand!” Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un
pas.
* “From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.”
And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the
standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one’s own nothingness and
immeasurable meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human
actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity,
goodness, and truth are absent.
CHAPTER XIX
What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign of 1812,
has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret, dissatisfaction, and
perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is that the French were not all
captured or destroyed when our three armies surrounded them in superior
numbers, when the disordered French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in
crowds, and when (as the historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop
the French, to cut them off, and capture them all?
How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than the
French had given battle at Borodinó, did not achieve its purpose when it had
surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim was to capture them? Can
the French be so enormously superior to us that when we had surrounded them
with superior forces we could not beat them? How could that happen?
History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions says that
this occurred because Kutúzov and Tormásov and Chichagóv, and this man and
that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers....
But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were guilty
of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried and punished? But
even if we admitted that Kutúzov, Chichagóv, and others were the cause of the
Russian failures, it is still incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian
army being what it was at Krásnoe and at the Berëzina (in both cases we had
superior forces), the French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not
captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.
The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military historians (to
the effect that Kutúzov hindered an attack) is unfounded, for we know that he
could not restrain the troops from attacking at Vyázma and Tarútino.
Why was the Russian army—which with inferior forces had withstood the
enemy in full strength at Borodinó—defeated at Krásnoe and the Berëzina by the
disorganized crowds of the French when it was numerically superior?
If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing Napoleon and
his marshals—and that aim was not merely frustrated but all attempts to attain it
were most shamefully baffled—then this last period of the campaign is quite
rightly considered by the French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly
considered victorious by Russian historians.
The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims of logic must
admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical rhapsodies about valor,
devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit that the French retreat from
Moscow was a series of victories for Napoleon and defeats for Kutúzov.
But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a conclusion
involves a contradiction, since the series of French victories brought the French
complete destruction, while the series of Russian defeats led to the total
destruction of their enemy and the liberation of their country.
The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the historians studying the
events from the letters of the sovereigns and the generals, from memoirs, reports,
projects, and so forth, have attributed to this last period of the war of 1812 an
aim that never existed, namely that of cutting off and capturing Napoleon with
his marshals and his army.
There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have been
senseless and its attainment quite impossible.
It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon’s disorganized army was
flying from Russia with all possible speed, that is to say, was doing just what
every Russian desired. So what was the use of performing various operations on
the French who were running away as fast as they possibly could?
Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men whose
whole energy was directed to flight.
Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one’s own troops in order to
destroy the French army, which without external interference was destroying
itself at such a rate that, though its path was not blocked, it could not carry
across the frontier more than it actually did in December, namely a hundredth
part of the original army.
Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the Emperor,
kings, and dukes—whose capture would have been in the highest degree
embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit diplomatists of the time
(Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized. Still more senseless would have been
the wish to capture army corps of the French, when our own army had melted
away to half before reaching Krásnoe and a whole division would have been
needed to convoy the corps of prisoners, and when our men were not always
getting full rations and the prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger.
All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon and his army
were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving out of his garden a
cow that had trampled down the beds he had planted, should run to the gate and
hit the cow on the head. The only thing to be said in excuse of that gardener
would be that he was very angry. But not even that could be said for those who
drew up this project, for it was not they who had suffered from the trampled
beds.
But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would have been
senseless, it was impossible.
It was impossible first because—as experience shows that a three-mile
movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with the plans—the
probability of Chichagóv, Kutúzov, and Wittgenstein effecting a junction on time
at an appointed place was so remote as to be tantamount to impossibility, as in
fact thought Kutúzov, who when he received the plan remarked that diversions
planned over great distances do not yield the desired results.
Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with which
Napoleon’s army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than the Russians
possessed would have been required.
Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term “to cut off” has no
meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army. To cut off an army—
to bar its road—is quite impossible, for there is always plenty of room to avoid
capture and there is the night when nothing can be seen, as the military scientists
might convince themselves by the example of Krásnoe and of the Berëzina. It is
only possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it is only
possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one’s hand. Men can only be taken
prisoners if they surrender according to the rules of strategy and tactics, as the
Germans did. But the French troops quite rightly did not consider that this suited
them, since death by hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.
Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the world began
has a war been fought under such conditions as those that obtained in 1812, and
the Russian army in its pursuit of the French strained its strength to the utmost
and could not have done more without destroying itself.
During the movement of the Russian army from Tarútino to Krásnoe it lost
fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to the population of a
large provincial town. Half the men fell out of the army without a battle.
And it is of this period of the campaign—when the army lacked boots and
sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and was camping
out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees of frost, when there were
only seven or eight hours of daylight and the rest was night in which the
influence of discipline cannot be maintained, when men were taken into that
region of death where discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but
for months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and cold,
when half the army perished in a single month—it is of this period of the
campaign that the historians tell us how Milorádovich should have made a flank
march to such and such a place, Tormásov to another place, and Chichagóv
should have crossed (more than knee-deep in snow) to somewhere else, and how
so-and-so “routed” and “cut off” the French and so on and so on.
The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should have been
done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not to blame because
other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed that they should do what was
impossible.
All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between the facts
and the historical accounts only arises because the historians dealing with the
matter have written the history of the beautiful words and sentiments of various
generals, and not the history of the events.
To them the words of Milorádovich seem very interesting, and so do their
surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but the question of those
fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals and in graves does not even
interest them, for it does not come within the range of their investigation.
Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans and
consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who took a direct
part in the events, and all the questions that seemed insoluble easily and simply
receive an immediate and certain solution.
The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in the
imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it was senseless and
unattainable.
The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion. That aim was
attained in the first place of itself, as the French ran away, and so it was only
necessary not to stop their flight. Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla
warfare which was destroying the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large
Russian army was following the French, ready to use its strength in case their
movement stopped.
The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the
experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a menace than
to strike the running animal on the head.
BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 - 13
CHAPTER I
When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror: substance similar
to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it is a beloved and intimate
human being that is dying, besides this horror at the extinction of life there is a
severance, a spiritual wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and
sometimes heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.
After Prince Andrew’s death Natásha and Princess Mary alike felt this.
Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing cloud of death that
overhung them, they dared not look life in the face. They carefully guarded their
open wounds from any rough and painful contact. Everything: a carriage passing
rapidly in the street, a summons to dinner, the maid’s inquiry what dress to
prepare, or worse still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an
insult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary quiet in which
they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful choir that still resounded in
their imagination, and hindered their gazing into those mysterious limitless
vistas that for an instant had opened out before them.
Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and pain. They
spoke little even to one another, and when they did it was of very unimportant
matters.
Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of a future
seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did they avoid
anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them that what they had
lived through and experienced could not be expressed in words, and that any
reference to the details of his life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the
mystery that had been accomplished before their eyes.
Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of everything that
might lead up to the subject—this halting on all sides at the boundary of what
they might not mention—brought before their minds with still greater purity and
clearness what they were both feeling.
But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent arbiter of her own
fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was the first to be called back to
life from that realm of sorrow in which she had dwelt for the first fortnight. She
received letters from her relations to which she had to reply; the room in which
little Nicholas had been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpátych came to
Yaroslávl with reports on the state of their affairs and with advice and
suggestions that they should return to Moscow to the house on the Vozdvízhenka
Street, which had remained uninjured and needed only slight repairs. Life did not
stand still and it was necessary to live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to
emerge from the realm of secluded contemplation in which she had lived till
then, and sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natásha alone, yet the
cares of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yielded to them. She
went through the accounts with Alpátych, conferred with Dessalles about her
nephew, and gave orders and made preparations for the journey to Moscow.
Natásha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making
preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.
Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natásha go with her to Moscow, and
both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw their daughter losing
strength every day and thought that a change of scene and the advice of Moscow
doctors would be good for her.
“I am not going anywhere,” Natásha replied when this was proposed to her.
“Do please just leave me alone!” And she ran out of the room, with difficulty
refraining from tears of vexation and irritation rather than of sorrow.
After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her grief, Natásha
spent most of the time in her room by herself, sitting huddled up feet and all in
the corner of the sofa, tearing and twisting something with her slender nervous
fingers and gazing intently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on.
This solitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in absolute need of it. As
soon as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her position and expression,
and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting impatiently for the
intruder to go.
She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that on which—
with a terrible questioning too great for her strength—her spiritual gaze was
fixed.
One day toward the end of December Natásha, pale and thin, dressed in a
black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a knot, was
crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously crumpling and
smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at a corner of the door.
She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone—to the other side of
life. And that other side of life, of which she had never before thought and which
had formerly seemed to her so far away and improbable, was now nearer and
more akin and more comprehensible than this side of life, where everything was
either emptiness and desolation or suffering and indignity.
She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine him
otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he had been at
Mytíshchi, at Tróitsa, and at Yaroslávl.
She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own, and
sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.
There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning his head on
his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his shoulders raised. His
lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and a wrinkle comes and goes on his pale
forehead. One of his legs twitches just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natásha knows
that he is struggling with terrible pain. “What is that pain like? Why does he
have that pain? What does he feel? How does it hurt him?” thought Natásha. He
noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to speak seriously:
“One thing would be terrible,” said he: “to bind oneself forever to a suffering
man. It would be continual torture.” And he looked searchingly at her. Natásha
as usual answered before she had time to think what she would say. She said:
“This can’t go on—it won’t. You will get well—quite well.”
She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what she
had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at those words and
understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in that protracted gaze.
“I agreed,” Natásha now said to herself, “that it would be dreadful if he
always continued to suffer. I said it then only because it would have been
dreadful for him, but he understood it differently. He thought it would be
dreadful for me. He then still wished to live and feared death. And I said it so
awkwardly and stupidly! I did not say what I meant. I thought quite differently.
Had I said what I thought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to
die continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared with what I
am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No, he did not and
never will know it. And now it will never, never be possible to put it right.” And
now he again seemed to be saying the same words to her, only in her imagination
Natásha this time gave him a different answer. She stopped him and said:
“Terrible for you, but not for me! You know that for me there is nothing in life
but you, and to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me,” and he took her
hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible evening four days before his
death. And in her imagination she said other tender and loving words which she
might have said then but only spoke now: “I love thee!... thee! I love, love...” she
said, convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperate
effort....
She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in her eyes;
then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this. Again everything
was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again with a strained frown she peered
toward the world where he was. And now, now it seemed to her she was
penetrating the mystery.... But at the instant when it seemed that the
incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle
struck painfully on her ears. Dunyásha, her maid, entered the room quickly and
abruptly with a frightened look on her face and showing no concern for her
mistress.
“Come to your Papa at once, please!” said she with a strange, excited look. “A
misfortune... about Peter Ilýnich... a letter,” she finished with a sob.
CHAPTER II
Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natásha was feeling a special
estrangement from the members of her own family. All of them—her father,
mother, and Sónya—were so near to her, so familiar, so commonplace, that all
their words and feelings seemed an insult to the world in which she had been
living of late, and she felt not merely indifferent to them but regarded them with
hostility. She heard Dunyásha’s words about Peter Ilýnich and a misfortune, but
did not grasp them.
“What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live their
own old, quiet, and commonplace life,” thought Natásha.
As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of her
mother’s room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had evidently
run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were choking him. When he
saw Natásha he waved his arms despairingly and burst into convulsively painful
sobs that distorted his soft round face.
“Pe... Pétya... Go, go, she... is calling...” and weeping like a child and quickly
shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost fell into it, covering his face
with his hands.
Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natásha’s whole being.
Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache as if something was
being torn inside her and she were dying. But the pain was immediately followed
by a feeling of release from the oppressive constraint that had prevented her
taking part in life. The sight of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother
that she heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and her
own grief.
She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to her mother’s
door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came out from that room and
taking Natásha by the arm said something to her. Natásha neither saw nor heard
her. She went in with rapid steps, pausing at the door for an instant as if
struggling with herself, and then ran to her mother.
The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward position,
stretching out and beating her head against the wall. Sónya and the maids were
holding her arms.
“Natásha! Natásha!...” cried the countess. “It’s not true... it’s not true... He’s
lying... Natásha!” she shrieked, pushing those around her away. “Go away, all of
you; it’s not true! Killed!... ha, ha, ha!... It’s not true!”
Natásha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother, embraced her,
and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face toward herself, and
clung to her.
“Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy,” she kept on
whispering, not pausing an instant.
She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her, demanded a
pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her mother’s dress.
“My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!...” she whispered incessantly,
kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her own irrepressible and
streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.
The countess pressed her daughter’s hand, closed her eyes, and became quiet
for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed swiftness, glanced
vacantly around her, and seeing Natásha began to press her daughter’s head with
all her strength. Then she turned toward her daughter’s face which was wincing
with pain and gazed long at it.
“Natásha, you love me?” she said in a soft trustful whisper. “Natásha, you
would not deceive me? You’ll tell me the whole truth?”
Natásha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look there was nothing
but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.
“My darling Mummy!” she repeated, straining all the power of her love to
find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that crushed her mother.
And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing to believe that
she could live when her beloved boy was killed in the bloom of life, escaped
from reality into a world of delirium.
Natásha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the next
day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother. Her persevering
and patient love seemed completely to surround the countess every moment, not
explaining or consoling, but recalling her to life.
During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few minutes, and
Natásha rested her head on the arm of her chair and closed her eyes, but opened
them again on hearing the bedstead creak. The countess was sitting up in bed
and speaking softly.
“How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won’t you have some tea?”
Natásha went up to her. “You have improved in looks and grown more manly,”
continued the countess, taking her daughter’s hand.
“Mamma! What are you saying...”
“Natásha, he is no more, no more!”
And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first time.
CHAPTER III
Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sónya and the count tried to replace
Natásha but could not. They saw that she alone was able to restrain her mother
from unreasoning despair. For three weeks Natásha remained constantly at her
mother’s side, sleeping on a lounge chair in her room, making her eat and drink,
and talking to her incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing
tones soothed her mother.
The mother’s wounded spirit could not heal. Pétya’s death had torn from her
half her life. When the news of Pétya’s death had come she had been a fresh and
vigorous woman of fifty, but a month later she left her room a listless old woman
taking no interest in life. But the same blow that almost killed the countess, this
second blow, restored Natásha to life.
A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is like a
physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep wound may heal and
its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike can yet heal completely only
as the result of a vital force from within.
Natásha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her life was ended, but her
love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the essence of life—love—
was still active within her. Love awoke and so did life.
Prince Andrew’s last days had bound Princess Mary and Natásha together;
this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another. Princess Mary put off
her departure, and for three weeks looked after Natásha as if she had been a sick
child. The last weeks passed in her mother’s bedroom had strained Natásha’s
physical strength.
One afternoon noticing Natásha shivering with fever, Princess Mary took her
to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natásha lay down, but when
Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away she called her back.
“I don’t want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little.”
“You are tired—try to sleep.”
“No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me.”
“She is much better. She spoke so well today,” said Princess Mary.
Natásha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned Princess
Mary’s face.
“Is she like him?” thought Natásha. “Yes, like and yet not like. But she is quite
original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me. What is in her heart?
All that is good. But how? What is her mind like? What does she think about
me? Yes, she is splendid!”
“Mary,” she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary’s hand to herself, “Mary, you
mustn’t think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love you! Let us be quite,
quite friends.”
And Natásha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making
Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her feelings.
From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only between
women was established between Princess Mary and Natásha. They were
continually kissing and saying tender things to one another and spent most of
their time together. When one went out the other became restless and hastened to
rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony with one another than either of
them felt with herself when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up
between them; an exclusive feeling of life being possible only in each other’s
presence.
Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were already in
bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They spoke most of what
was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her childhood, of her mother, her father,
and her daydreams; and Natásha, who with a passive lack of understanding had
formerly turned away from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry of
Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess Mary by affection,
learned to love her past too and to understand a side of life previously
incomprehensible to her. She did not think of applying submission and self-
abnegation to her own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys, but she
understood and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For
Princess Mary, listening to Natásha’s tales of childhood and early youth, there
also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life: belief in life
and its enjoyment.
Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they thought)
their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him had the effect of
making them gradually begin to forget him without being conscious of it.
Natásha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all talked
about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was suddenly
overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness, and loss of good
looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm carefully, surprised at its
thinness, and in the morning noticed her drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous
face in her glass. It seemed to her that things must be so, and yet it was
dreadfully sad.
One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.
Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and then,
testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.
Another time when she called Dunyásha her voice trembled, so she called
again—though she could hear Dunyásha coming—called her in the deep chest
tones in which she had been wont to sing, and listened attentively to herself.
She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the layer of
slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable, delicate young
shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking root would so cover with
their living verdure the grief that weighed her down that it would soon no longer
be seen or noticed. The wound had begun to heal from within.
At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count insisted
on Natásha’s going with her to consult the doctors.
CHAPTER IV
After the encounter at Vyázma, where Kutúzov had been unable to hold back
his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy and so on, the
farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the Russians who pursued them,
continued as far as Krásnoe without a battle. The flight was so rapid that the
Russian army pursuing the French could not keep up with them; cavalry and
artillery horses broke down, and the information received of the movements of
the French was never reliable.
The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous marching at
the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not go any faster.
To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only necessary to
grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not losing more than five
thousand killed and wounded after Tarútino and less than a hundred prisoners,
the Russian army which left that place a hundred thousand strong reached
Krásnoe with only fifty thousand.
The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our army as the
flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference was that the Russian army
moved voluntarily, with no such threat of destruction as hung over the French,
and that the sick Frenchmen were left behind in enemy hands while the sick
Russians left behind were among their own people. The chief cause of the
wastage of Napoleon’s army was the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing
proof of this is the corresponding decrease of the Russian army.
Kutúzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the movement
of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian army generals,
directed his whole activity here, as he had done at Tarútino and Vyázma, to
hastening it on while easing the movement of our army.
But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of the army
caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident, another reason for
slackening the pace and delaying presented itself to Kutúzov. The aim of the
Russian army was to pursue the French. The road the French would take was
unknown, and so the closer our troops trod on their heels the greater distance
they had to cover. Only by following at some distance could one cut across the
zigzag path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals
meant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches, whereas
the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To that end Kutúzov’s
activity was directed during the whole campaign from Moscow to Vílna—not
casually or intermittently but so consistently that he never once deviated from it.
Kutúzov felt and knew—not by reasoning or science but with the whole of his
Russian being—what every Russian soldier felt: that the French were beaten,
that the enemy was flying and must be driven out; but at the same time he like
the soldiers realized all the hardship of this march, the rapidity of which was
unparalleled for such a time of the year.
But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian army, who
wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody, and for some reason to
capture a king or a duke—it seemed that now—when any battle must be horrible
and senseless—was the very time to fight and conquer somebody. Kutúzov
merely shrugged his shoulders when one after another they presented projects of
maneuvers to be made with those soldiers—ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half
starved—who within a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half
their number, and who at the best if the flight continued would have to go a
greater distance than they had already traversed, before they reached the frontier.
This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow, and to cut
off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians stumbled on the French
army.
So it was at Krásnoe, where they expected to find one of the three French
columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen thousand men.
Despite all Kutúzov’s efforts to avoid that ruinous encounter and to preserve his
troops, the massacre of the broken mob of French soldiers by worn-out Russians
continued at Krásnoe for three days.
Toll wrote a disposition: “The first column will march to so and so,” etc. And
as usual nothing happened in accord with the disposition. Prince Eugène of
Württemberg fired from a hill over the French crowds that were running past,
and demanded reinforcements which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the
Russians, dispersed and hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way
round as best they could, and continued their flight.
Milorádovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the
commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found when he was
wanted—that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche * as he styled himself—who
was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys demanding their surrender,
wasted time, and did not do what he was ordered to do.
* Knight without fear and without reproach.
“I give you that column, lads,” he said, riding up to the troops and pointing
out the French to the cavalry.
And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could scarcely
move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to them—that is to say,
to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold, frost-bitten, and starving—and the
column that had been presented to them threw down its arms and surrendered as
it had long been anxious to do.
At Krásnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several hundred cannon,
and a stick called a “marshal’s staff,” and disputed as to who had distinguished
himself and were pleased with their achievement—though they much regretted
not having taken Napoleon, or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and
reproached one another and especially Kutúzov for having failed to do so.
These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of the most
melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes and imagined
that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable deed. They blamed
Kutúzov and said that from the very beginning of the campaign he had prevented
their vanquishing Napoleon, that he thought of nothing but satisfying his
passions and would not advance from the Linen Factories because he was
comfortable there, that at Krásnoe he checked the advance because on learning
that Napoleon was there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that
he had an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so on,
and so on.
Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions, talk in this
way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as grand, while
Kutúzov is described by foreigners as a crafty, dissolute, weak old courtier, and
by Russians as something indefinite—a sort of puppet useful only because he
had a Russian name.
CHAPTER V
In 1812 and 1813 Kutúzov was openly accused of blundering. The Emperor
was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written by order of the
Highest Authorities it is said that Kutúzov was a cunning court liar, frightened of
the name of Napoleon, and that by his blunders at Krásnoe and the Berëzina he
deprived the Russian army of the glory of complete victory over the French. *
* History of the year 1812. The character of Kutúzov and
reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at
Krásnoe, by Bogdánovich.
Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian mind
does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary individuals who,
discerning the will of Providence, submit their personal will to it. The hatred and
contempt of the crowd punish such men for discerning the higher laws.
For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon—that most
insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in exile, showed human
dignity—Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he is grand. But
Kutúzov—the man who from the beginning to the end of his activity in 1812,
never once swerving by word or deed from Borodinó to Vílna, presented an
example exceptional in history of self-sacrifice and a present consciousness of
the future importance of what was happening—Kutúzov seems to them
something indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year 1812
they always seem a little ashamed.
And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose activity was so
unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be difficult to imagine any
aim more worthy or more consonant with the will of the whole people. Still
more difficult would it be to find an instance in history of the aim of an historical
personage being so completely accomplished as that to which all Kutúzov’s
efforts were directed in 1812.
Kutúzov never talked of “forty centuries looking down from the Pyramids,” of
the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what he intended to accomplish
or had accomplished; in general he said nothing about himself, adopted no pose,
always appeared to be the simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the
simplest and most ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to
Madame de Staël, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with
generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who tried to prove
anything to him. When Count Rostopchín at the Yaúza bridge galloped up to
Kutúzov with personal reproaches for having caused the destruction of Moscow,
and said: “How was it you promised not to abandon Moscow without a battle?”
Kutúzov replied: “And I shall not abandon Moscow without a battle,” though
Moscow was then already abandoned. When Arakchéev, coming to him from the
Emperor, said that Ermólov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutúzov
replied: “Yes, I was just saying so myself,” though a moment before he had said
quite the contrary. What did it matter to him—who then alone amid a senseless
crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what was happening—
what did it matter to him whether Rostopchín attributed the calamities of
Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it matter to him who was
appointed chief of the artillery.
Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man—who by
experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the words serving
as their expression are not what move people—use quite meaningless words that
happened to enter his head.
But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the whole time of
his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single aim toward which he
moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite of himself, in very diverse
circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his real thoughts with the bitter
conviction that he would not be understood. Beginning with the battle of
Borodinó, from which time his disagreement with those about him began, he
alone said that the battle of Borodinó was a victory, and repeated this both
verbally and in his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone
said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to Lauriston’s
proposal of peace, he said: There can be no peace, for such is the people’s will.
He alone during the retreat of the French said that all our maneuvers are useless,
everything is being accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the
enemy must be offered “a golden bridge”; that neither the Tarútino, the Vyázma,
nor the Krásnoe battles were necessary; that we must keep some force to reach
the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a single Russian for ten
Frenchmen.
And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakchéev to please the
Emperor, he alone—incurring thereby the Emperor’s displeasure—said in Vílna
that to carry the war beyond the frontier is useless and harmful.
Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of the events.
His actions—without the smallest deviation—were all directed to one and the
same threefold end: (1) to brace all his strength for conflict with the French, (2)
to defeat them, and (3) to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible
the sufferings of our people and of our army.
This procrastinator Kutúzov, whose motto was “Patience and Time,” this
enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodinó, investing the preparations for
it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutúzov who before the battle of Austerlitz
began said that it would be lost, he alone, in contradiction to everyone else,
declared till his death that Borodinó was a victory, despite the assurance of
generals that the battle was lost and despite the fact that for an army to have to
retire after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during the whole
retreat insisted that battles, which were useless then, should not be fought, and
that a new war should not be begun nor the frontiers of Russia crossed.
It is easy now to understand the significance of these events—if only we
abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that existed only in the
heads of a dozen individuals—for the events and results now lie before us.
But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general opinion, so truly
discern the importance of the people’s view of the events that in all his activity
he was never once untrue to it?
The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of the
events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he possessed in full purity
and strength.
Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling caused the
people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar’s wish, to select him—an old
man in disfavor—to be their representative in the national war. And only that
feeling placed him on that highest human pedestal from which he, the
commander in chief, devoted all his powers not to slaying and destroying men
but to saving and showing pity on them.
That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not be cast in the
false mold of a European hero—the supposed ruler of men—that history has
invented.
To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception of
greatness.
CHAPTER VI
The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle of
Krásnoe. Toward evening—after much disputing and many mistakes made by
generals who did not go to their proper places, and after adjutants had been sent
about with counterorders—when it had become plain that the enemy was
everywhere in flight and that there could and would be no battle, Kutúzov left
Krásnoe and went to Dóbroe whither his headquarters had that day been
transferred.
The day was clear and frosty. Kutúzov rode to Dóbroe on his plump little
white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented generals who
whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the road groups of
French prisoners captured that day (there were seven thousand of them) were
crowding to warm themselves at campfires. Near Dóbroe an immense crowd of
tattered prisoners, buzzing with talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they
had been able to get hold of, were standing in the road beside a long row of
unharnessed French guns. At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of
talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on Kutúzov who, wearing a white cap with a
red band and a padded overcoat that bulged on his round shoulders, moved
slowly along the road on his white horse. One of the generals was reporting to
him where the guns and prisoners had been captured.
Kutúzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general was
saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he gazed attentively
and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a specially wretched appearance.
Most of them were disfigured by frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and nearly all
had red, swollen and festering eyes.
One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them, one of
whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of raw flesh with
their hands. There was something horrible and bestial in the fleeting glance they
threw at the riders and in the malevolent expression with which, after a glance at
Kutúzov, the soldier with the sores immediately turned away and went on with
what he was doing.
Kutúzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He puckered his face,
screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head. At another spot he noticed
a Russian soldier laughingly patting a Frenchman on the shoulder, saying
something to him in a friendly manner, and Kutúzov with the same expression
on his face again swayed his head.
“What were you saying?” he asked the general, who continuing his report
directed the commander in chief’s attention to some standards captured from the
French and standing in front of the Preobrazhénsk regiment.
“Ah, the standards!” said Kutúzov, evidently detaching himself with difficulty
from the thoughts that preoccupied him.
He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at him from
all sides awaiting a word from him.
He stopped in front of the Preobrazhénsk regiment, sighed deeply, and closed
his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers carrying the standards to
advance and surround the commander in chief with them. Kutúzov was silent for
a few seconds and then, submitting with evident reluctance to the duty imposed
by his position, raised his head and began to speak. A throng of officers
surrounded him. He looked attentively around at the circle of officers,
recognizing several of them.
“I thank you all!” he said, addressing the soldiers and then again the officers.
In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words were distinctly heard. “I
thank you all for your hard and faithful service. The victory is complete and
Russia will not forget you! Honor to you forever.”
He paused and looked around.
“Lower its head, lower it!” he said to a soldier who had accidentally lowered
the French eagle he was holding before the Preobrazhénsk standards. “Lower,
lower, that’s it. Hurrah lads!” he added, addressing the men with a rapid
movement of his chin.
“Hur-r-rah!” roared thousands of voices.
While the soldiers were shouting Kutúzov leaned forward in his saddle and
bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and apparently ironic gleam.
“You see, brothers...” said he when the shouts had ceased... and all at once his
voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no longer the commander in
chief speaking but an ordinary old man who wanted to tell his comrades
something very important.
There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of the soldiers,
who moved that they might hear better what he was going to say.
“You see, brothers, I know it’s hard for you, but it can’t be helped! Bear up; it
won’t be for long now! We’ll see our visitors off and then we’ll rest. The Tsar
won’t forget your service. It is hard for you, but still you are at home while they
—you see what they have come to,” said he, pointing to the prisoners. “Worse
off than our poorest beggars. While they were strong we didn’t spare ourselves,
but now we may even pity them. They are human beings too. Isn’t it so, lads?”
He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze fixed upon
him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew brighter and brighter
with an old man’s mild smile, which drew the corners of his lips and eyes into a
cluster of wrinkles. He ceased speaking and bowed his head as if in perplexity.
“But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody bastards!”
he cried, suddenly lifting his head.
And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first time during the
whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the soldiers laughing joyfully and
shouting “Hurrah!”
Kutúzov’s words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could have
repeated the field marshal’s address, begun solemnly and then changing into an
old man’s simplehearted talk; but the hearty sincerity of that speech, the feeling
of majestic triumph combined with pity for the foe and consciousness of the
justice of our cause, exactly expressed by that old man’s good-natured
expletives, was not merely understood but lay in the soul of every soldier and
found expression in their joyous and long-sustained shouts. Afterwards when
one of the generals addressed Kutúzov asking whether he wished his calèche to
be sent for, Kutúzov in answering unexpectedly gave a sob, being evidently
greatly moved.
CHAPTER VII
When the troops reached their night’s halting place on the eighth of
November, the last day of the Krásnoe battles, it was already growing dusk. All
day it had been calm and frosty with occasional lightly falling snow and toward
evening it began to clear. Through the falling snow a purple-black and starry sky
showed itself and the frost grew keener.
An infantry regiment which had left Tarútino three thousand strong but now
numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that night at its halting
place—a village on the highroad. The quartermasters who met the regiment
announced that all the huts were full of sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen,
and members of the staff. There was only one hut available for the regimental
commander.
The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the village
and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.
Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its lair
and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep through the snow
into a birch forest to the right of the village, and immediately the sound of axes
and swords, the crashing of branches, and merry voices could be heard from
there. Another section amid the regimental wagons and horses which were
standing in a group was busy getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding
the horses. A third section scattered through the village arranging quarters for the
staff officers, carrying out the French corpses that were in the huts, and dragging
away boards, dry wood, and thatch from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle
fences to serve for shelter.
Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle wall
of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.
“Now then, all together—shove!” cried the voices, and the huge surface of the
wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost, was seen swaying in the
gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked more and more and at last the wall
fell, and with it the men who had been pushing it. Loud, coarse laughter and
joyous shouts ensued.
“Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That’s it.... Where are you
shoving to?”
“Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!”
All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to sing. At the end of
the third verse as the last note died away, twenty voices roared out at once: “Oo-
oo-oo-oo! That’s it. All together! Heave away, boys!...” but despite their united
efforts the wattle hardly moved, and in the silence that followed the heavy
breathing of the men was audible.
“Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand... will
you? You may want us one of these days.”
Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into the
village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about thirty-five feet
long and seven feet high, moved forward along the village street, swaying,
pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of the gasping men.
“Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now....”
Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.
“What are you up to?” suddenly came the authoritative voice of a sergeant
major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden. “There are gentry
here; the general himself is in that hut, and you foul-mouthed devils, you brutes,
I’ll give it to you!” shouted he, hitting the first man who came in his way a
swinging blow on the back. “Can’t you make less noise?”
The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and wiped
his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling against the wattle.
“There, how that devil hits out! He’s made my face all bloody,” said he in a
frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on.
“Don’t you like it?” said a laughing voice, and moderating their tones the men
moved forward.
When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud as before,
interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives.
In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered and were
in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day and the maneuvers
suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a flank march to the left, cut
off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture him.
By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place the campfires
were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood crackled, the snow was
melting, and black shadows of soldiers flitted to and fro all over the occupied
space where the snow had been trodden down.
Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without any
orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night, shelters were
rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being boiled, and muskets and
accouterments put in order.
The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by the Eighth
Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket rests, and a
campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo, called the roll, had supper, and
settled down round the fires for the night—some repairing their footgear, some
smoking pipes, and some stripping themselves naked to steam the lice out of
their shirts.
CHAPTER VIII
One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched conditions
the Russian soldiers were in at that time—lacking warm boots and sheepskin
coats, without a roof over their heads, in the snow with eighteen degrees of frost,
and without even full rations (the commissariat did not always keep up with the
troops)—they would have presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.
On the contrary, the army had never under the best material conditions
presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was because all who began
to grow depressed or who lost strength were sifted out of the army day by day.
All the physically or morally weak had long since been left behind and only the
flower of the army—physically and mentally—remained.
More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company than
anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and their campfire
blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by their wattle they demanded
contributions of fuel.
“Eh, Makéev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you lost or
have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!” shouted a red-haired and
red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking because of the smoke but not
moving back from the fire. “And you, Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!” said
he to another soldier.
This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being robust he
ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier they called “Jackdaw,” a
thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose obediently and was about to go but at
that instant there came into the light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a
young soldier carrying a load of wood.
“Bring it here—that’s fine!”
They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with their
mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats, making the flames hiss
and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit their pipes. The handsome young
soldier who had brought the wood, setting his arms akimbo, began stamping his
cold feet rapidly and deftly on the spot where he stood.
“Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It’s well that I’m a musketeer...” he
sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.
“Look out, your soles will fly off!” shouted the red-haired man, noticing that
the sole of the dancer’s boot was hanging loose. “What a fellow you are for
dancing!”
The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw it on the
fire.
“Right enough, friend,” said he, and, having sat down, took out of his
knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his foot. “It’s the
steam that spoils them,” he added, stretching out his feet toward the fire.
“They’ll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we’ve finished
hammering them, we’re to receive double kits!”
“And that son of a bitch Petróv has lagged behind after all, it seems,” said one
sergeant major.
“I’ve had an eye on him this long while,” said the other.
“Well, he’s a poor sort of soldier....”
“But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday.”
“Yes, it’s all very well, but when a man’s feet are frozen how can he walk?”
“Eh? Don’t talk nonsense!” said a sergeant major.
“Do you want to be doing the same?” said an old soldier, turning
reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.
“Well, you know,” said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in a squeaky
and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the fire, “a plump man
gets thin, but for a thin one it’s death. Take me, now! I’ve got no strength left,”
he added, with sudden resolution turning to the sergeant major. “Tell them to
send me to hospital; I’m aching all over; anyway I shan’t be able to keep up.”
“That’ll do, that’ll do!” replied the sergeant major quietly.
The soldier said no more and the talk went on.
“What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is that not one of
them had what you might call real boots on,” said a soldier, starting a new
theme. “They were no more than make-believes.”
“The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for the
colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys,” put in the dancer.
“As they turned them over one seemed still alive and, would you believe it, he
jabbered something in their lingo.”
“But they’re a clean folk, lads,” the first man went on; “he was white—as
white as birchbark—and some of them are such fine fellows, you might think
they were nobles.”
“Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there.”
“But they don’t understand our talk at all,” said the dancer with a puzzled
smile. “I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in his own way. A
queer lot!”
“But it’s strange, friends,” continued the man who had wondered at their
whiteness, “the peasants at Mozháysk were saying that when they began burying
the dead—where the battle was you know—well, those dead had been lying
there for nearly a month, and says the peasant, ‘they lie as white as paper, clean,
and not as much smell as a puff of powder smoke.’”
“Was it from the cold?” asked someone.
“You’re a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If it had been
from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. ‘But,’ he says, ‘go up to ours
and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,’ he says, ‘we tie our faces up with
kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But
theirs,’ he says, ‘are white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of
gunpowder.’”
All were silent.
“It must be from their food,” said the sergeant major. “They used to gobble the
same food as the gentry.”
No one contradicted him.
“That peasant near Mozháysk where the battle was said the men were all
called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days and still
didn’t finish carting the dead away. And as for the wolves, he says...”
“That was a real battle,” said an old soldier. “It’s the only one worth
remembering; but since that... it’s only been tormenting folk.”
“And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them and, my
word, they didn’t let us get near before they just threw down their muskets and
went on their knees. ‘Pardon!’ they say. That’s only one case. They say Plátov
took ‘Poleon himself twice. But he didn’t know the right charm. He catches him
and catches him—no good! He turns into a bird in his hands and flies away. And
there’s no way of killing him either.”
“You’re a first-class liar, Kiselëv, when I come to look at you!”
“Liar, indeed! It’s the real truth.”
“If he fell into my hands, when I’d caught him I’d bury him in the ground
with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he’s ruined!”
“Well, anyhow we’re going to end it. He won’t come here again,” remarked
the old soldier, yawning.
The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to sleep.
“Look at the stars. It’s wonderful how they shine! You would think the women
had spread out their linen,” said one of the men, gazing with admiration at the
Milky Way.
“That’s a sign of a good harvest next year.”
“We shall want some more wood.”
“You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That’s queer.”
“O Lord!”
“What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he’s
sprawling!”
In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen asleep could be
heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now and again exchanging a
few words. From a campfire a hundred paces off came a sound of general, merry
laughter.
“Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!” said one of the soldiers,
“and what a lot of them there are!”
One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.
“They’re having such fun,” said he, coming back. “Two Frenchies have turned
up. One’s quite frozen and the other’s an awful swaggerer. He’s singing
songs....”
“Oh, I’ll go across and have a look....”
And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.
CHAPTER IX
The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest. A huge
campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow, lighting up the branches
of trees heavy with hoarfrost.
About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the forest, and
the crackling of dry branches.
“A bear, lads,” said one of the men.
They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into the bright
firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging to one another.
These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They came up
to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our soldiers did not
understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an officer’s hat and seemed
quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he had been going to sit down, but fell.
The other, a short sturdy soldier with a shawl tied round his head, was stronger.
He raised his companion and said something, pointing to his mouth. The soldiers
surrounded the Frenchmen, spread a greatcoat on the ground for the sick man,
and brought some buckwheat porridge and vodka for both of them.
The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his head
wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.
When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he
suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the soldiers,
who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and resting his head on
his elbow lay silent beside the campfire, looking at the Russian soldiers with red
and vacant eyes. Occasionally he emitted a long-drawn groan and then again
became silent. Morel, pointing to his shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers
the fact that Ramballe was an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer
who had come up to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would not take a
French officer into his hut to warm him, and when the messenger returned and
said that the colonel wished the officer to be brought to him, Ramballe was told
to go. He rose and tried to walk, but staggered and would have fallen had not a
soldier standing by held him up.
“You won’t do it again, eh?” said one of the soldiers, winking and turning
mockingly to Ramballe.
“Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are—a real peasant!” came
rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.
They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two soldiers,
and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around their necks while they
carried him and began wailing plaintively:
“Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh, my brave,
kind friends,” and he leaned his head against the shoulder of one of the men like
a child.
Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire, surrounded by the
soldiers.
Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes, was
wearing a woman’s cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round his head
over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a French song in a hoarse
broken voice, with an arm thrown round the nearest soldier. The soldiers simply
held their sides as they watched him.
“Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I’ll soon pick it up. How is it?”
said the man—a singer and a wag—whom Morel was embracing.
“Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!” sang Morel, winking. “Ce diable à
quatre...” *
* “Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy
devil.”
Princess Mary and Natásha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked of what
Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her opinion of Pierre nor did
Natásha speak of him.
“Well, good night, Mary!” said Natásha. “Do you know, I am often afraid that
by not speaking of him” (she meant Prince Andrew) “for fear of not doing
justice to our feelings, we forget him.”
Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice of
Natásha’s remark, but she did not express agreement in words.
“Is it possible to forget?” said she.
“It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard and painful, but
good, very good!” said Natásha. “I am sure he really loved him. That is why I
told him... Was it all right?” she added, suddenly blushing.
“To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!” said Princess Mary.
“Do you know, Mary...” Natásha suddenly said with a mischievous smile such
as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long time, “he has somehow
grown so clean, smooth, and fresh—as if he had just come out of a Russian bath;
do you understand? Out of a moral bath. Isn’t it true?”
“Yes,” replied Princess Mary. “He has greatly improved.”
“With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as if he had come
straight from the bath... Papa used to...”
“I understand why he” (Prince Andrew) “liked no one so much as him,” said
Princess Mary.
“Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when they are
quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike him—in everything.”
“Yes, but he’s wonderful.”
“Well, good night,” said Natásha.
And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her face as if it
had been forgotten there.
CHAPTER XVIII
It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He paced up and
down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult problem and frowning,
now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and wincing, and now smiling happily.
He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natásha, and of their love, at one
moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that feeling. It was
already six in the morning and he still paced up and down the room.
“Well, what’s to be done if it cannot be avoided? What’s to be done?
Evidently it has to be so,” said he to himself, and hastily undressing he got into
bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or indecision.
“Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do everything that
she and I may be man and wife,” he told himself.
A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on the Friday.
When he awoke on the Thursday, Savélich came to ask him about packing for
the journey.
“What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in Petersburg?” he
asked involuntarily, though only to himself. “Oh, yes, long ago before this
happened I did for some reason mean to go to Petersburg,” he reflected. “Why?
But perhaps I shall go. What a good fellow he is and how attentive, and how he
remembers everything,” he thought, looking at Savélich’s old face, “and what a
pleasant smile he has!”
“Well, Savélich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?” Pierre asked
him.
“What’s the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under the late
count—the kingdom of heaven be his!—and we have lived under you too,
without ever being wronged.”
“And your children?”
“The children will live just the same. With such masters one can live.”
“But what about my heirs?” said Pierre. “Supposing I suddenly marry... it
might happen,” he added with an involuntary smile.
“If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good thing.”
“How easy he thinks it,” thought Pierre. “He doesn’t know how terrible it is
and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is terrible!”
“So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?” asked Savélich.
“No, I’ll put it off for a bit. I’ll tell you later. You must forgive the trouble I
have put you to,” said Pierre, and seeing Savélich smile, he thought: “But how
strange it is that he should not know that now there is no Petersburg for me, and
that that must be settled first of all! But probably he knows it well enough and is
only pretending. Shall I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?” Pierre
reflected. “No, another time.”
At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had been to see
Princess Mary the day before and had there met—“Whom do you think? Natásha
Rostóva!”
The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than if he had
seen Anna Semënovna.
“Do you know her?” asked Pierre.
“I have seen the princess,” she replied. “I heard that they were arranging a
match for her with young Rostóv. It would be a very good thing for the Rostóvs,
they are said to be utterly ruined.”
“No; I mean do you know Natásha Rostóva?”
“I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great pity.”
“No, she either doesn’t understand or is pretending,” thought Pierre. “Better
not say anything to her either.”
The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre’s journey.
“How kind they all are,” thought Pierre. “What is surprising is that they
should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of interest to
them. And all for me!”
On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him to send a
representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things that were to be returned to
their owners that day.
“And this man too,” thought Pierre, looking into the face of the Chief of
Police. “What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind. Fancy bothering about
such trifles now! And they actually say he is not honest and takes bribes. What
nonsense! Besides, why shouldn’t he take bribes? That’s the way he was brought
up, and everybody does it. But what a kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as
he looks at me.”
Pierre went to Princess Mary’s to dinner.
As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned down, he
was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The picturesqueness of the chimney
stacks and tumble-down walls of the burned-out quarters of the town, stretching
out and concealing one another, reminded him of the Rhine and the Colosseum.
The cabmen he met and their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for
new houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked at
him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: “Ah, there he is! Let’s see
what will come of it!”
At the entrance to Princess Mary’s house Pierre felt doubtful whether he had
really been there the night before and really seen Natásha and talked to her.
“Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall go in and find no one there.” But he had
hardly entered the room before he felt her presence with his whole being by the
loss of his sense of freedom. She was in the same black dress with soft folds and
her hair was done the same way as the day before, yet she was quite different.
Had she been like this when he entered the day before he could not for a moment
have failed to recognize her.
She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince
Andrew’s fiancée. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on her face
was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.
Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there, but
Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house with her.
Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening. Though
Princess Mary and Natásha were evidently glad to see their visitor and though all
Pierre’s interest was now centered in that house, by the evening they had talked
over everything and the conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and
repeatedly broke off. He stayed so long that Princess Mary and Natásha
exchanged glances, evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre noticed this
but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat on because he simply
could not get up and take his leave.
Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and complaining of a
headache began to say good night.
“So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?” she asked.
“No, I am not going,” Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone and as though
offended. “Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow—but I won’t say good-by yet. I
will call round in case you have any commissions for me,” said he, standing
before Princess Mary and turning red, but not taking his departure.
Natásha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other hand
instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly and intently at
him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had plainly shown before had
now quite passed off. With a deep and long-drawn sigh she seemed to be
prepared for a lengthy talk.
When Natásha left the room Pierre’s confusion and awkwardness immediately
vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly moved an armchair
toward Princess Mary.
“Yes, I wanted to tell you,” said he, answering her look as if she had spoken.
“Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess, my dear friend,
listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of her, I know it’s impossible to
speak of it now. But I want to be a brother to her. No, not that, I don’t, I can’t...”
He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.
“Well,” he went on with an evident effort at self-control and coherence. “I
don’t know when I began to love her, but I have loved her and her alone all my
life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine life without her. I cannot propose to
her at present, but the thought that perhaps she might someday be my wife and
that I may be missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell me, can I
hope? Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!” he added after a pause, and
touched her hand as she did not reply.
“I am thinking of what you have told me,” answered Princess Mary. “This is
what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love at present...”
Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love was
impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden change in
Natásha two days before that she would not only not be hurt if Pierre spoke of
his love, but that it was the very thing she wished for.
“To speak to her now wouldn’t do,” said the princess all the same.
“But what am I to do?”
“Leave it to me,” said Princess Mary. “I know...”
Pierre was looking into Princess Mary’s eyes.
“Well?... Well?...” he said.
“I know that she loves... will love you,” Princess Mary corrected herself.
Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a frightened
expression seized Princess Mary’s hand.
“What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Princess Mary with a smile. “Write to her parents, and
leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it to happen and my heart tells
me it will.”
“No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can’t be.... How happy I am! No, it
can’t be!” Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess Mary’s hands.
“Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you,” she said.
“To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I’ll go. But I may come again
tomorrow?”
Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natásha was less animated than she had
been the day before; but that day as he looked at her Pierre sometimes felt as if
he was vanishing and that neither he nor she existed any longer, that nothing
existed but happiness. “Is it possible? No, it can’t be,” he told himself at every
look, gesture, and word that filled his soul with joy.
When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could not help
holding it a little longer in his own.
“Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this treasure of feminine
charm so strange to me now, is it possible that it will one day be mine forever, as
familiar to me as I am to myself?... No, that’s impossible!...”
“Good-by, Count,” she said aloud. “I shall look forward very much to your
return,” she added in a whisper.
And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face which
accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of inexhaustible
memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for Pierre. “‘I shall look
forward very much to your return....’ Yes, yes, how did she say it? Yes, ‘I shall
look forward very much to your return.’ Oh, how happy I am! What is happening
to me? How happy I am!” said Pierre to himself.
CHAPTER XIX
There was nothing in Pierre’s soul now at all like what had troubled it during
his courtship of Hélène.
He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the words he
had spoken, or say: “Oh, why did I not say that?” and, “Whatever made me say
‘Je vous aime’?” On the contrary, he now repeated in imagination every word
that he or Natásha had spoken and pictured every detail of her face and smile,
and did not wish to diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and
again. There was now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what he
had undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible doubt sometimes crossed
his mind: “Wasn’t it all a dream? Isn’t Princess Mary mistaken? Am I not too
conceited and self-confident? I believe all this—and suddenly Princess Mary
will tell her, and she will be sure to smile and say: ‘How strange! He must be
deluding himself. Doesn’t he know that he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am
something altogether different and higher.’”
That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now make any
plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable that if only he could
attain it, it would be the end of all things. Everything ended with that.
A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself incapable,
possessed him. The whole meaning of life—not for him alone but for the whole
world—seemed to him centered in his love and the possibility of being loved by
her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied with one thing only—his
future happiness. Sometimes it seemed to him that other people were all as
pleased as he was himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to
be busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw allusions to his
happiness. He often surprised those he met by his significantly happy looks and
smiles which seemed to express a secret understanding between him and them.
And when he realized that people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied
them with his whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them that all
that occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.
When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service, or when
the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the assumption that
everybody’s welfare depended on this or that issue of events, he would listen
with a mild and pitying smile and surprise people by his strange comments. But
at this time he saw everybody—both those who, as he imagined, understood the
real meaning of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who
evidently did not understand it—in the bright light of the emotion that shone
within himself, and at once without any effort saw in everyone he met
everything that was good and worthy of being loved.
When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her memory
aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the bliss he now knew.
Prince Vasíli, who having obtained a new post and some fresh decorations was
particularly proud at this time, seemed to him a pathetic, kindly old man much to
be pitied.
Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. All the views
he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained true for him always.
He not only did not renounce them subsequently, but when he was in doubt or
inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had held at this time of his
madness and they always proved correct.
“I may have appeared strange and queer then,” he thought, “but I was not so
mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had more insight than at
any other time, and understood all that is worth understanding in life, because...
because I was happy.”
Pierre’s insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to discover
personal attributes which he termed “good qualities” in people before loving
them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by loving people without
cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.
CHAPTER XX
After Pierre’s departure that first evening, when Natásha had said to Princess
Mary with a gaily mocking smile: “He looks just, yes, just as if he had come out
of a Russian bath—in a short coat and with his hair cropped,” something hidden
and unknown to herself, but irrepressible, awoke in Natásha’s soul.
Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered. To her own
surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to the surface and demanded
satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to have forgotten all that had
happened to her. She no longer complained of her position, did not say a word
about the past, and no longer feared to make happy plans for the future. She
spoke little of Pierre, but when Princess Mary mentioned him a long-
extinguished light once more kindled in her eyes and her lips curved with a
strange smile.
The change that took place in Natásha at first surprised Princess Mary; but
when she understood its meaning it grieved her. “Can she have loved my brother
so little as to be able to forget him so soon?” she thought when she reflected on
the change. But when she was with Natásha she was not vexed with her and did
not reproach her. The reawakened power of life that had seized Natásha was so
evidently irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her presence Princess Mary
felt that she had no right to reproach her even in her heart.
Natásha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling that she did
not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad, but bright and cheerful.
When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk with Pierre,
Natásha met her on the threshold.
“He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?” she repeated.
And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness for her
joy settled on Natásha’s face.
“I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me.”
Understandable and touching as the look with which Natásha gazed at her
seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her agitation, these words
pained her for a moment. She remembered her brother and his love.
“But what’s to be done? She can’t help it,” thought the princess.
And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natásha all that Pierre had said.
On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natásha was astounded.
“To Petersburg!” she repeated as if unable to understand.
But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary’s face she guessed the
reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.
“Mary,” said she, “tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being bad.
Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me....”
“You love him?”
“Yes,” whispered Natásha.
“Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake,” said Princess Mary,
who because of those tears quite forgave Natásha’s joy.
“It won’t be just yet—someday. Think what fun it will be when I am his wife
and you marry Nicholas!”
“Natásha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about you.”
They were silent awhile.
“But why go to Petersburg?” Natásha suddenly asked, and hastily replied to
her own question. “But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He must....”
FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 - 20
CHAPTER I
Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had
subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the mysterious
forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of their motion are
unknown to us) continued to operate.
Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the movement of
humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time. Various groups of people
formed and dissolved, the coming formation and dissolution of kingdoms and
displacement of peoples was in course of preparation.
The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to shore as
previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures were not borne by the
waves from one shore to another as before. They now seemed to rotate on one
spot. The historical figures at the head of armies, who formerly reflected the
movement of the masses by ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected
the restless movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws, and
treaties.
The historians call this activity of the historical figures “the reaction.”
In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical personages
who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the reaction. All the well-
known people of that period, from Alexander and Napoleon to Madame de Staël,
Photius, Schelling, Fichte, Chateaubriand, and the rest, pass before their stern
judgment seat and are acquitted or condemned according to whether they
conduced to progress or to reaction.
According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in Russia also,
and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who according to them was
the chief cause of the liberal movement at the commencement of his reign, being
the savior of Russia.
There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist to learned
historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander for things he did
wrong at this period of his reign.
“He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he did well
and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning of his reign and
during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution to Poland, forming the
Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakchéev, favoring Golítsyn and mysticism,
and afterwards Shishkóv and Photius. He also acted badly by concerning himself
with the active army and disbanding the Semënov regiment.”
It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the historians
address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good for humanity.
What do these reproaches mean?
Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander I (the liberal
attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle with Napoleon, the firmness
he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of 1813) flow from the same sources—
the circumstances of his birth, education, and life—that made his personality
what it was and from which the actions for which they blame him (the Holy
Alliance, the restoration of Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also
flowed?
In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?
It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I, standing on the
highest possible pinnacle of human power with the blinding light of history
focused upon him; a character exposed to those strongest of all influences: the
intrigues, flattery, and self-deception inseparable from power; a character who at
every moment of his life felt a responsibility for all that was happening in
Europe; and not a fictitious but a live character who like every man had his
personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth—that
this character—though not lacking in virtue (the historians do not accuse him of
that)—had not the same conception of the welfare of humanity fifty years ago as
a present-day professor who from his youth upwards has been occupied with
learning: that is, with books and lectures and with taking notes from them.
But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was mistaken in his
view of what was good for the people, we must inevitably assume that the
historian who judges Alexander will also after the lapse of some time turn out to
be mistaken in his view of what is good for humanity. This assumption is all the
more natural and inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see
that every year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for mankind
changes; so that what once seemed good, ten years later seems bad, and vice
versa. And what is more, we find at one and the same time quite contradictory
views as to what is bad and what is good in history: some people regard giving a
constitution to Poland and forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in
Alexander, while others regard it as blameworthy.
The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful or harmful,
for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or harmful. If that activity
displeases somebody, this is only because it does not agree with his limited
understanding of what is good. Whether the preservation of my father’s house in
Moscow, or the glory of the Russian arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg
and other universities, or the freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia, or the
balance of power in Europe, or a certain kind of European culture called
“progress” appear to me to be good or bad, I must admit that besides these things
the action of every historic character has other more general purposes
inaccessible to me.
But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all contradictions
and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by which to try historic
characters and events; let us say that Alexander could have done everything
differently; let us say that with guidance from those who blame him and who
profess to know the ultimate aim of the movement of humanity, he might have
arranged matters according to the program his present accusers would have
given him—of nationality, freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover
the ground). Let us assume that this program was possible and had then been
formulated, and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then have become
of the activity of all those who opposed the tendency that then prevailed in the
government—an activity that in the opinion of the historians was good and
beneficent? Their activity would not have existed: there would have been no life,
there would have been nothing.
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is
destroyed.
CHAPTER II
If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to the
attainment of certain ends—the greatness of Russia or of France, the balance of
power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas of the Revolution, general progress,
or anything else—then it is impossible to explain the facts of history without
introducing the conceptions of chance and genius.
If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century had
been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have been accomplished
without all the preceding wars and without the invasion. If the aim was the
aggrandizement of France, that might have been attained without the Revolution
and without the Empire. If the aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing
press could have accomplished that much better than warfare. If the aim was the
progress of civilization, it is easy to see that there are other ways of diffusing
civilization more expedient than by the destruction of wealth and of human lives.
Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?
Because it happened so! “Chance created the situation; genius utilized it,”
says history.
But what is chance? What is genius?
The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing thing and
therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of
understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I think
that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about chance. I see a
force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not
understand why this occurs and I talk of genius.
To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a special
enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the others must seem to be a
genius. And it must appear an astonishing conjunction of genius with a whole
series of extraordinary chances that this ram, who instead of getting into the
general fold every evening goes into a special enclosure where there are oats—
that this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat.
But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to them happens
solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they need only admit that what
happens to them may also have purposes beyond their ken, and they will at once
perceive a unity and coherence in what happened to the ram that was fattened.
Even if they do not know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least
know that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally, and will no
longer need the conceptions of chance or genius.
Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately intelligible to
us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond our ken, may we discern the
sequence of experiences in the lives of historic characters and perceive the cause
of the effect they produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities),
and then the words chance and genius become superfluous.
We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European
convulsions and that we know only the facts—that is, the murders, first in
France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria, in Spain, and in Russia—
and that the movements from the west to the east and from the east to the west
form the essence and purpose of these events, and not only shall we have no
need to see exceptional ability and genius in Napoleon and Alexander, but we
shall be unable to consider them to be anything but like other men, and we shall
not be obliged to have recourse to chance for an explanation of those small
events which made these people what they were, but it will be clear that all those
small events were inevitable.
By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall clearly
perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for any single plant
better suited to it than those it produces, so it is impossible to imagine any two
people more completely adapted down to the smallest detail for the purpose they
had to fulfill, than Napoleon and Alexander with all their antecedents.
CHAPTER III
The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of the
beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the mass of the
European peoples from west to east and afterwards from east to west. The
commencement of that movement was the movement from west to east. For the
peoples of the west to be able to make their warlike movement to Moscow it was
necessary: (1) that they should form themselves into a military group of a size
able to endure a collision with the warlike military group of the east, (2) that
they should abandon all established traditions and customs, and (3) that during
their military movement they should have at their head a man who could justify
to himself and to them the deceptions, robberies, and murders which would have
to be committed during that movement.
And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately large group
was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions, and step by step a group
was formed of larger dimensions with new customs and traditions, and a man
was produced who would stand at the head of the coming movement and bear
the responsibility for all that had to be done.
A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without a name,
and not even a Frenchman, emerges—by what seem the strangest chances—from
among all the seething French parties, and without joining any one of them is
borne forward to a prominent position.
The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance of his
opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling and self-confident
limitations of this man raise him to the head of the army. The brilliant qualities
of the soldiers of the army sent to Italy, his opponents’ reluctance to fight, and
his own childish audacity and self-confidence secure him military fame.
Innumerable so-called chances accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into
which he falls with the rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts to
avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received into the Russian
service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes to nothing. During the
war in Italy he is several times on the verge of destruction and each time is saved
in an unexpected manner. Owing to various diplomatic considerations the
Russian armies—just those which might have destroyed his prestige—do not
appear upon the scene till he is no longer there.
On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a process of
dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably wiped out and
destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous position presents itself
in the form of an aimless and senseless expedition to Africa. Again so-called
chance accompanies him. Impregnable Malta surrenders without a shot; his most
reckless schemes are crowned with success. The enemy’s fleet, which
subsequently did not let a single boat pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In
Africa a whole series of outrages are committed against the almost unarmed
inhabitants. And the men who commit these crimes, especially their leader,
assure themselves that this is admirable, this is glory—it resembles Caesar and
Alexander the Great and is therefore good.
This ideal of glory and grandeur—which consists not merely in considering
nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on every crime one commits,
ascribing to it an incomprehensible supernatural significance—that ideal,
destined to guide this man and his associates, had scope for its development in
Africa. Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The cruelty
of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His childishly rash,
uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa, leaving his comrades in
distress, is set down to his credit, and again the enemy’s fleet twice lets him slip
past. When, intoxicated by the crimes he has committed so successfully, he
reaches Paris, the dissolution of the republican government, which a year earlier
might have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there now
as a newcomer free from party entanglements can only serve to exalt him—and
though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for his new rôle.
He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties snatched at him
and demanded his participation.
He alone—with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy and Egypt,
his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and frankness in lying—he alone
could justify what had to be done.
He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from his will
and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his mistakes, he is drawn
into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and the conspiracy is crowned with
success.
He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes to flee,
considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon and says senseless
things that should have ruined him. But the once proud and shrewd rulers of
France, feeling that their part is played out, are even more bewildered than he,
and do not say the words they should have said to destroy him and retain their
power.
Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by agreement
co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the characters of the rulers of
France, who submit to him; chance forms the character of Paul I of Russia who
recognizes his government; chance contrives a plot against him which not only
fails to harm him but confirms his power. Chance puts the Duc d’Enghien in his
hands and unexpectedly causes him to kill him—thereby convincing the mob
more forcibly than in any other way that he had the right, since he had the might.
Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to prepare an expedition
against England (which would inevitably have ruined him) he never carries out
that intention, but unexpectedly falls upon Mack and the Austrians, who
surrender without a battle. Chance and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz;
and by chance all men, not only the French but all Europe—except England
which does not take part in the events about to happen—despite their former
horror and detestation of his crimes, now recognize his authority, the title he has
given himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which seems excellent and
reasonable to them all.
As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement, the
western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806, 1807, and 1809,
gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of people that had formed in
France unites into one group with the peoples of Central Europe. The strength of
the justification of the man who stands at the head of the movement grows with
the increased size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory period this man
had formed relations with all the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited
rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate Napoleonic
ideal of glory and grandeur. One after another they hasten to display their
insignificance before him. The King of Prussia sends his wife to seek the great
man’s mercy; the Emperor of Austria considers it a favor that this man receives a
daughter of the Caesars into his bed; the Pope, the guardian of all that the nations
hold sacred, utilizes religion for the aggrandizement of the great man. It is not
Napoleon who prepares himself for the accomplishment of his role, so much as
all those round him who prepare him to take on himself the whole responsibility
for what is happening and has to happen. There is no step, no crime or petty
fraud he commits, which in the mouths of those around him is not at once
represented as a great deed. The most suitable fête the Germans can devise for
him is a celebration of Jena and Auerstädt. Not only is he great, but so are his
ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law. Everything is done
to deprive him of the remains of his reason and to prepare him for his terrible
part. And when he is ready so too are the forces.
The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal—Moscow. That city
is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the opposing armies had
suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to Wagram. But suddenly instead of
those chances and that genius which hitherto had so consistently led him by an
uninterrupted series of successes to the predestined goal, an innumerable
sequence of inverse chances occur—from the cold in his head at Borodinó to the
sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frosts—and instead of genius,
stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.
The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are now not for
Napoleon but always against him.
A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a remarkable
resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east. Attempted drives
from east to west—similar to the contrary movements of 1805, 1807, and 1809
—precede the great westward movement; there is the same coalescence into a
group of enormous dimensions; the same adhesion of the people of Central
Europe to the movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing
rapidity as the goal is approached.
Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government and army are
destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any account; all his actions are
evidently pitiful and mean, but again an inexplicable chance occurs. The allies
detest Napoleon whom they regard as the cause of their sufferings. Deprived of
power and authority, his crimes and his craft exposed, he should have appeared
to them what he appeared ten years previously and one year later—an outlawed
brigand. But by some strange chance no one perceives this. His part is not yet
ended. The man who ten years before and a year later was considered an
outlawed brigand is sent to an island two days’ sail from France, which for some
reason is presented to him as his dominion, and guards are given to him and
millions of money are paid him.
CHAPTER IV
The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The waves of
the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies are formed in which
float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have caused the floods to abate.
But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The diplomatists think
that their disagreements are the cause of this fresh pressure of natural forces;
they anticipate war between their sovereigns; the position seems to them
insoluble. But the wave they feel to be rising does not come from the quarter
they expect. It rises again from the same point as before—Paris. The last
backwash of the movement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to
solve the apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military
movement of that period of history.
The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without any
conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but by strange
chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man they cursed the day
before and will curse again a month later.
This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.
That act is performed.
The last rôle is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off his powder
and paint: he will not be wanted any more.
And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to himself in
solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues and lies when the
justification is no longer needed, and displaying to the whole world what it was
that people had mistaken for strength as long as an unseen hand directed his
actions.
The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the actor shows
him to us.
“See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was not he but I
who moved you?”
But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people understood
this.
Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of Alexander I, the
man who stood at the head of the countermovement from east to west.
What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head of
that movement from east to west?
What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with European
affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests; a moral superiority
over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated with him; a mild and attractive
personality; and a personal grievance against Napoleon. And all this was found
in Alexander I; all this had been prepared by innumerable so-called chances in
his life: his education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded him, and
by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.
During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed. But as
soon as the necessity for a general European war presented itself he appeared in
his place at the given moment and, uniting the nations of Europe, led them to the
goal.
The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses all
possible power. How does he use it?
Alexander I—the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early years had
striven only for his people’s welfare, the originator of the liberal innovations in
his fatherland—now that he seemed to possess the utmost power and therefore to
have the possibility of bringing about the welfare of his peoples—at the time
when Napoleon in exile was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how
he would have made mankind happy had he retained power—Alexander I,
having fulfilled his mission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly
recognizes the insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, and
gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, saying only:
“Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like the rest
of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of God.”
As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and yet at the
same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to comprehend, so each
individual has within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve a general
purpose incomprehensible to man.
A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and
declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet admires the bee sucking from the
chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A
beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive,
says that it exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life of
the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees
and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race. A botanist notices that
the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and
sees in this the purpose of the bee’s existence. Another, observing the migration
of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the
purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the
first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern. The higher
the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it
becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other
manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and
nations.
CHAPTER V
Natásha’s wedding to Bezúkhov, which took place in 1813, was the last happy
event in the family of the old Rostóvs. Count Ilyá Rostóv died that same year
and, as always happens, after the father’s death the family group broke up.
The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the flight from it,
the death of Prince Andrew, Natásha’s despair, Pétya’s death, and the old
countess’ grief fell blow after blow on the old count’s head. He seemed to be
unable to understand the meaning of all these events, and bowed his old head in
a spiritual sense as if expecting and inviting further blows which would finish
him. He seemed now frightened and distraught and now unnaturally animated
and enterprising.
The arrangements for Natásha’s marriage occupied him for a while. He
ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful, but his
cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the contrary it evoked the
compassion of those who knew and liked him.
When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to complain
of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his bed. He realized from
the first that he would not get up again, despite the doctor’s encouragement. The
countess passed a fortnight in an armchair by his pillow without undressing.
Every time she gave him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand.
On his last day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for
having dissipated their property—that being the chief fault of which he was
conscious. After receiving communion and unction he quietly died; and next day
a throng of acquaintances who came to pay their last respects to the deceased
filled the house rented by the Rostóvs. All these acquaintances, who had so often
dined and danced at his house and had so often laughed at him, now said, with a
common feeling of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves: “Well,
whatever he may have been he was a most worthy man. You don’t meet such
men nowadays.... And which of us has not weaknesses of his own?”
It was just when the count’s affairs had become so involved that it was
impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year that he
unexpectedly died.
Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his father’s
death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and without waiting for
it to be accepted took leave of absence and went to Moscow. The state of the
count’s affairs became quite obvious a month after his death, surprising everyone
by the immense total of small debts the existence of which no one had suspected.
The debts amounted to double the value of the property.
Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance. But he
regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father’s memory, which he held sacred,
and therefore would not hear of refusing and accepted the inheritance together
with the obligation to pay the debts.
The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague but powerful
influence exerted on them while he lived by the count’s careless good nature, all
proceeded to enforce their claims at once. As always happens in such cases
rivalry sprang up as to which should get paid first, and those who like Mítenka
held promissory notes given them as presents now became the most exacting of
the creditors. Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had
seemed to pity the old man—the cause of their losses (if they were losses)—now
remorselessly pursued the young heir who had voluntarily undertaken the debts
and was obviously not guilty of contracting them.
Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold by auction
for half its value, and half the debts still remained unpaid. Nicholas accepted
thirty thousand rubles offered him by his brother-in-law Bezúkhov to pay off
debts he regarded as genuinely due for value received. And to avoid being
imprisoned for the remainder, as the creditors threatened, he re-entered the
government service.
He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel at the
next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold on life; and so
despite his reluctance to remain in Moscow among people who had known him
before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil service, he accepted a post in
Moscow in that service, doffed the uniform of which he was so fond, and moved
with his mother and Sónya to a small house on the Sívtsev Vrazhók.
Natásha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had no clear idea
of Nicholas’ circumstances. Having borrowed money from his brother-in-law,
Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from him. His position was the
more difficult because with his salary of twelve hundred rubles he had not only
to keep himself, his mother, and Sónya, but had to shield his mother from
knowledge of their poverty. The countess could not conceive of life without the
luxurious conditions she had been used to from childhood and, unable to realize
how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage (which they did not
keep) to send for a friend, now some expensive article of food for herself, or
wine for her son, or money to buy a present as a surprise for Natásha or Sónya,
or for Nicholas himself.
Sónya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her whims
and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their poverty from the old
countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably indebted to Sónya for all she was
doing for his mother and greatly admired her patience and devotion, but tried to
keep aloof from her.
He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and because there
was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that people are valued for, but little
that could have made him love her. He felt that the more he valued her the less
he loved her. He had taken her at her word when she wrote giving him his
freedom and now behaved as if all that had passed between them had been long
forgotten and could never in any case be renewed.
Nicholas’ position became worse and worse. The idea of putting something
aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he not save anything, but to
comply with his mother’s demands he even incurred some small debts. He could
see no way out of this situation. The idea of marrying some rich woman, which
was suggested to him by his female relations, was repugnant to him. The other
way out—his mother’s death—never entered his head. He wished for nothing
and hoped for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy and stern
satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his position. He tried to avoid his
old acquaintances with their commiseration and offensive offers of assistance; he
avoided all distraction and recreation, and even at home did nothing but play
cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the room, and smoke one pipe
after another. He seemed carefully to cherish within himself the gloomy mood
which alone enabled him to endure his position.
CHAPTER VI
At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From reports
current in town she learned how the Rostóvs were situated, and how “the son has
sacrificed himself for his mother,” as people were saying.
“I never expected anything else of him,” said Princess Mary to herself, feeling
a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her friendly relations with all
the Rostóvs which had made her almost a member of the family, she thought it
her duty to go to see them. But remembering her relations with Nicholas in
Vorónezh she was shy about doing so. Making a great effort she did however go
to call on them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow.
Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess’ room could only be
reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure as she had
expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a cold, stiff, proud
expression she had not seen on it before. He inquired about her health, led the
way to his mother, and having sat there for five minutes left the room.
When the princess came out of the countess’ room Nicholas met her again,
and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to the anteroom. To
her remarks about his mother’s health he made no reply. “What’s that to you?
Leave me in peace,” his looks seemed to say.
“Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can’t bear these
ladies and all these civilities!” said he aloud in Sónya’s presence, evidently
unable to repress his vexation, after the princess’ carriage had disappeared.
“Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?” cried Sónya, hardly able to
conceal her delight. “She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!”
Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess any more.
But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several times a day.
She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her, expressed a wish
to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored when she began to talk
about her.
Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the princess, but his
silence irritated her.
“She is a very admirable and excellent young woman,” said she, “and you
must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing somebody, and I think it
must be dull for you only seeing us.”
“But I don’t in the least want to, Mamma.”
“You used to want to, and now you don’t. Really I don’t understand you, my
dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see anyone.”
“But I never said I was dull.”
“Why, you said yourself you don’t want even to see her. She is a very
admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now suddenly you have
got some notion or other in your head. You hide everything from me.”
“Not at all, Mamma.”
“If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now—but I only ask you
to return a call. One would think mere politeness required it.... Well, I have
asked you, and now I won’t interfere any more since you have secrets from your
mother.”
“Well, then, I’ll go if you wish it.”
“It doesn’t matter to me. I only wish it for your sake.”
Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a patience, trying
to divert his mother’s attention to another topic.
The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and the day
after that.
After her visit to the Rostóvs and her unexpectedly chilly reception by
Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been right in not
wishing to be the first to call.
“I expected nothing else,” she told herself, calling her pride to her aid. “I have
nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the old lady, who was always
kind to me and to whom I am under many obligations.”
But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling akin to
remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she had firmly
resolved not to call on the Rostóvs again and to forget the whole matter, she felt
herself all the time in an awkward position. And when she asked herself what
distressed her, she had to admit that it was her relation to Rostóv. His cold, polite
manner did not express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed
something, and until she could discover what that something was, she felt that
she could not be at ease.
One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her
nephew’s lessons, she was informed that Rostóv had called. With a firm
resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she sent for
Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.
Her first glance at Nicholas’ face told her that he had only come to fulfill the
demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain the tone in which he
addressed her.
They spoke of the countess’ health, of their mutual friends, of the latest war
news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety had elapsed after which a
visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say good-by.
With Mademoiselle Bourienne’s help the princess had maintained the
conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he rose, she was
so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and her mind was so full of the
question why she alone was granted so little happiness in life, that in a fit of
absent-mindedness she sat still, her luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not
noticing that he had risen.
Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her abstraction,
made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then again looked at the
princess. She still sat motionless with a look of suffering on her gentle face. He
suddenly felt sorry for her and was vaguely conscious that he might be the cause
of the sadness her face expressed. He wished to help her and say something
pleasant, but could think of nothing to say.
“Good-by, Princess!” said he.
She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said as if waking up. “Are you going already,
Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the countess!”
“Wait a moment, I’ll fetch it,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she left the
room.
They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.
“Yes, Princess,” said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, “it doesn’t seem long
ago since we first met at Boguchárovo, but how much water has flowed since
then! In what distress we all seemed to be then, yet I would give much to bring
back that time... but there’s no bringing it back.”
Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous ones as he
said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden meaning of his words
which would explain his feeling for her.
“Yes, yes,” said she, “but you have no reason to regret the past, Count. As I
understand your present life, I think you will always recall it with satisfaction,
because the self-sacrifice that fills it now...”
“I cannot accept your praise,” he interrupted her hurriedly. “On the contrary I
continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an interesting or cheerful
subject.”
His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the princess
had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved, and it was to him
that she now spoke.
“I thought you would allow me to tell you this,” she said. “I had come so near
to you... and to all your family that I thought you would not consider my
sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken,” and suddenly her voice trembled. “I
don’t know why,” she continued, recovering herself, “but you used to be
different, and...”
“There are a thousand reasons why,” laying special emphasis on the why.
“Thank you, Princess,” he added softly. “Sometimes it is hard.”
“So that’s why! That’s why!” a voice whispered in Princess Mary’s soul. “No,
it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only that handsome exterior,
that I loved in him. I divined his noble, resolute, self-sacrificing spirit too,” she
said to herself. “Yes, he is poor now and I am rich.... Yes, that’s the only
reason.... Yes, were it not for that...” And remembering his former tenderness,
and looking now at his kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood the cause
of his coldness.
“But why, Count, why?” she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer to
him. “Why? Tell me. You must tell me!”
He was silent.
“I don’t understand your why, Count,” she continued, “but it’s hard for me... I
confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of our former friendship.
And that hurts me.” There were tears in her eyes and in her voice. “I have had so
little happiness in life that every loss is hard for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-
by!” and suddenly she began to cry and was hurrying from the room.
“Princess, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed, trying to stop her. “Princess!”
She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one another’s
eyes—and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly became possible,
inevitable, and very near.
CHAPTER VII
In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to Bald
Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sónya.
Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without selling any
of his wife’s property, and having received a small inheritance on the death of a
cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as well.
In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs that he was able
to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was negotiating to buy back
Otrádnoe—that being his pet dream.
Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it that it
became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas was a plain farmer:
he did not like innovations, especially the English ones then coming into vogue.
He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the
raising of expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did
not make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He always had
before his mind’s eye the estate as a whole and not any particular part of it. The
chief thing in his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air,
nor manures, nor special plows, but that most important agent by which
nitrogen, oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective—the peasant laborer.
When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its different
branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his attention. The peasant
seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a judge of farming and an end in
himself. At first he watched the serfs, trying to understand their aims and what
they considered good and bad, and only pretended to direct them and give orders
while in reality learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and
their judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the
peasants’ tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their language, to grasp the
hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to them did he begin boldly to
manage his serfs, that is, to perform toward them the duties demanded of him.
And Nicholas’ management produced very brilliant results.
Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the estates he
at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and delegate, the very men
the serfs would themselves have chosen had they had the right to choose, and
these posts never changed hands. Before analyzing the properties of manure,
before entering into the debit and credit (as he ironically called it), he found out
how many cattle the peasants had and increased the number by all possible
means. He kept the peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not
allowing the family groups to divide into separate households. He was hard alike
on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to get them expelled from the
commune.
He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants’ hay and corn as
of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown and harvested so early and
so well, or got so good a return, as did Nicholas.
He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs—the “drones” as he
called them—and everyone said he spoiled them by his laxity. When a decision
had to be taken regarding a domestic serf, especially if one had to be punished,
he always felt undecided and consulted everybody in the house; but when it was
possible to have a domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so
without the least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with the
peasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by them all with
very few exceptions.
He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to make
things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined to do so. He
could not have said by what standard he judged what he should or should not do,
but the standard was quite firm and definite in his own mind.
Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he would say:
“What can one do with our Russian peasants?” and imagined that he could not
bear them.
Yet he loved “our Russian peasants” and their way of life with his whole soul,
and for that very reason had understood and assimilated the one way and manner
of farming which produced good results.
Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband’s and regretted that
she could not share it; but she could not understand the joys and vexations he
derived from that world, to her so remote and alien. She could not understand
why he was so particularly animated and happy when, after getting up at
daybreak and spending the whole morning in the fields or on the threshing floor,
he returned from the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her. She did
not understand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the farming of
the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermíshin, who with his family had
carted corn all night; or of the fact that his (Nicholas’) sheaves were already
stacked before anyone else had his harvest in. She did not understand why he
stepped out from the window to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and
winked so joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry and thirsty
shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away a threatening cloud
during the hay harvest he would return from the barn, flushed, sunburned, and
perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and gentian in his hair and, gleefully
rubbing his hands, would say: “Well, one more day and my grain and the
peasants’ will all be under cover.”
Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready to
anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she brought him a
petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed to her to be
excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should obstinately refuse her,
angrily asking her not to interfere in what was not her business. She felt he had a
world apart, which he loved passionately and which had laws she had not
fathomed.
Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work he
was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: “Not in the least; it never
entered my head and I wouldn’t do that for their good! That’s all poetry and old
wives’ talk—all that doing good to one’s neighbor! What I want is that our
children should not have to go begging. I must put our affairs in order while I am
alive, that’s all. And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That’s all
about it!” said he, clenching his vigorous fist. “And fairness, of course,” he
added, “for if the peasant is naked and hungry and has only one miserable horse,
he can do no good either for himself or for me.”
And all Nicholas did was fruitful—probably just because he refused to allow
himself to think that he was doing good to others for virtue’s sake. His means
increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring estates came to beg him to buy them,
and long after his death the memory of his administration was devoutly
preserved among the serfs. “He was a master... the peasants’ affairs first and then
his own. Of course he was not to be trifled with either—in a word, he was a real
master!”
CHAPTER VIII
One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas, and
that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of making free use
of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in this, but in the second year
of his marriage his view of that form of punishment suddenly changed.
Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Boguchárovo, a man
who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused of
dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the porch to
question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few replies the sound
of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch Nicholas went up to his
wife, who sat with her head bent low over her embroidery frame, and as usual
began to tell her what he had been doing that morning. Among other things he
spoke of the Boguchárovo elder. Countess Mary turned red and then pale, but
continued to sit with head bowed and lips compressed and gave her husband no
reply.
“Such an insolent scoundrel!” he cried, growing hot again at the mere
recollection of him. “If he had told me he was drunk and did not see... But what
is the matter with you, Mary?” he suddenly asked.
Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked down
again and her lips puckered.
“Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?”
The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in tears.
She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow or pity, and when
she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible charm.
The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain herself and
began to cry.
“Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!” and she
covered her face with her hands.
Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and paced up and
down the room. He understood what she was weeping about, but could not in his
heart at once agree with her that what he had regarded from childhood as quite
an everyday event was wrong. “Is it just sentimentality, old wives’ tales, or is she
right?” he asked himself. Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her
face filled with love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she was right and
that he had long been sinning against himself.
“Mary,” he said softly, going up to her, “it will never happen again; I give you
my word. Never,” he repeated in a trembling voice like a boy asking for
forgiveness.
The tears flowed faster still from the countess’ eyes. She took his hand and
kissed it.
“Nicholas, when did you break your cameo?” she asked to change the subject,
looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo of Laocoön’s head.
“Today—it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don’t remind me of it!” and again
he flushed. “I give you my word of honor it shan’t occur again, and let this
always be a reminder to me,” and he pointed to the broken ring.
After that, when in discussions with his village elders or stewards the blood
rushed to his face and his fists began to clench, Nicholas would turn the broken
ring on his finger and would drop his eyes before the man who was making him
angry. But he did forget himself once or twice within a twelvemonth, and then he
would go and confess to his wife, and would again promise that this should
really be the very last time.
“Mary, you must despise me!” he would say. “I deserve it.”
“You should go, go away at once, if you don’t feel strong enough to control
yourself,” she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her husband.
Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not liked. He
did not concern himself with the interests of his own class, and consequently
some thought him proud and others thought him stupid. The whole summer,
from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with the work on his farm. In
autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the same business-like seriousness—
leaving home for a month, or even two, with his hunt. In winter he visited his
other villages or spent his time reading. The books he read were chiefly
historical, and on these he spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as
he said, a serious library, and he made it a rule to read through all the books he
bought. He would sit in his study with a grave air, reading—a task he first
imposed upon himself as a duty, but which afterwards became a habit affording
him a special kind of pleasure and a consciousness of being occupied with
serious matters. In winter, except for business excursions, he spent most of his
time at home making himself one with his family and entering into all the details
of his children’s relations with their mother. The harmony between him and his
wife grew closer and closer and he daily discovered fresh spiritual treasures in
her.
From the time of his marriage Sónya had lived in his house. Before that,
Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and Sónya,
blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess Mary to be gentle
and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized the wrong he had done Sónya,
felt herself to blame toward her, and imagined that her wealth had influenced
Nicholas’ choice. She could not find fault with Sónya in any way and tried to be
fond of her, but often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome.
Once she had a talk with her friend Natásha about Sónya and about her own
injustice toward her.
“You know,” said Natásha, “you have read the Gospels a great deal—there is a
passage in them that just fits Sónya.”
“What?” asked Countess Mary, surprised.
“‘To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken
away.’ You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I don’t know. Perhaps she
lacks egotism, I don’t know, but from her is taken away, and everything has been
taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much
wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it
would not come off. She is a sterile flower, you know—like some strawberry
blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she doesn’t feel
it as you or I would.”
Though Countess Mary told Natásha that those words in the Gospel must be
understood differently, yet looking at Sónya she agreed with Natásha’s
explanation. It really seemed that Sónya did not feel her position trying, and had
grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not
so much of individuals as of the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached
herself not to the people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted
and spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services for which
she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient
gratitude.
The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the same scale
as under the old prince.
The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more than simple.
The immense house on the old stone foundations was of wood, plastered only
inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished with very simple hard sofas,
armchairs, tables, and chairs made by their own serf carpenters out of their own
birchwood. The house was spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and
apartments for visitors. Whole families of the Rostóvs’ and Bolkónskis’ relations
sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of servants and
stayed for months. Besides that, four times a year, on the name days and
birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred visitors would gather there for a day
or two. The rest of the year life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary
occupations, and its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers, provided out of
the produce of the estate.
CHAPTER IX
It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natásha had been
staying at her brother’s with her husband and children since early autumn. Pierre
had gone to Petersburg on business of his own for three weeks as he said, but
had remained there nearly seven weeks and was expected back every minute.
Besides the Bezúkhov family, Nicholas’ old friend the retired General Vasíli
Dmítrich Denísov was staying with the Rostóvs this fifth of December.
On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of
visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for a tail
coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to the new church he
had built, and then receive visitors who would come to congratulate him, offer
them refreshments, and talk about the elections of the nobility; but he considered
himself entitled to spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined the
bailiff’s accounts of the village in Ryazán which belonged to his wife’s nephew,
wrote two business letters, and walked over to the granaries, cattle yards and
stables before dinner. Having taken precautions against the general drunkenness
to be expected on the morrow because it was a great saint’s day, he returned to
dinner, and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at the
long table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household had assembled.
At that table were his mother, his mother’s old lady companion Belóva, his wife,
their three children with their governess and tutor, his wife’s nephew with his
tutor, Sónya, Denísov, Natásha, her three children, their governess, and old
Michael Ivánovich, the late prince’s architect, who was living on in retirement at
Bald Hills.
Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband took his
place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after taking up his table
napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass standing before him, that he
was out of humor, as was sometimes the case when he came in to dinner straight
from the farm—especially before the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood
of his, and when she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited till he
had had his soup and then began to talk to him and make him admit that there
was no cause for his ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and was hurt that
he should be angry with her without any reason, and she felt unhappy. She asked
him where he had been. He replied. She again inquired whether everything was
going well on the farm. Her unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he
replied hastily.
“Then I’m not mistaken,” thought Countess Mary. “Why is he cross with
me?” She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and wished to end
the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded unnatural, but could not refrain
from asking some more questions.
Thanks to Denísov the conversation at table soon became general and lively,
and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the table and went as usual to
thank the old countess, Countess Mary held out her hand and kissed her
husband, and asked him why he was angry with her.
“You always have such strange fancies! I didn’t even think of being angry,” he
replied.
But the word always seemed to her to imply: “Yes, I am angry but I won’t tell
you why.”
Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sónya and the old
countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to disagree, could find
nothing to reproach them with; but even they had their moments of antagonism.
Occasionally, and it was always just after they had been happiest together, they
suddenly had a feeling of estrangement and hostility, which occurred most
frequently during Countess Mary’s pregnancies, and this was such a time.
“Well, messieurs et mesdames,” said Nicholas loudly and with apparent
cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on purpose to vex her),
“I have been on my feet since six this morning. Tomorrow I shall have to suffer,
so today I’ll go and rest.”
And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room and lay down
on the sofa.
“That’s always the way,” thought Countess Mary. “He talks to everyone
except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him, especially when I am in this
condition.” She looked down at her expanded figure and in the glass at her pale,
sallow, emaciated face in which her eyes now looked larger than ever.
And everything annoyed her—Denísov’s shouting and laughter, Natásha’s
talk, and especially a quick glance Sónya gave her.
Sónya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling irritated.
Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything of what
they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the nursery.
The children were playing at “going to Moscow” in a carriage made of chairs
and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with them a little, but
the thought of her husband and his unreasonable crossness worried her. She got
up and, walking on tiptoe with difficulty, went to the small sitting room.
“Perhaps he is not asleep; I’ll have an explanation with him,” she said to
herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his mother, followed her on
tiptoe. She did not notice him.
“Mary, dear, I think he is asleep—he was so tired,” said Sónya, meeting her in
the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that she crossed her path
everywhere). “Andrew may wake him.”
Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt that Sónya
was right, and for that very reason flushed and with evident difficulty refrained
from saying something harsh. She made no reply, but to avoid obeying Sónya
beckoned to Andrew to follow her quietly and went to the door. Sónya went
away by another door. From the room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the
sound of his even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to his
wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth handsome forehead, his
mustache, and his whole face, as she had so often seen it in the stillness of the
night when he slept. Nicholas suddenly moved and cleared his throat. And at that
moment little Andrew shouted from outside the door: “Papa! Mamma’s standing
here!” Countess Mary turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He
grew silent, and quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess Mary. She knew
how Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through the door she heard Nicholas
clearing his throat again and stirring, and his voice said crossly:
“I can’t get a moment’s peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you bring him
here?”
“I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me....”
Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the
door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little black-eyed
three-year-old Natásha, her father’s pet, having learned from her brother that
Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting room, ran to her father
unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little girl boldly opened the creaking
door, went up to the sofa with energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having
examined the position of her father, who was asleep with his back to her, rose on
tiptoe and kissed the hand which lay under his head. Nicholas turned with a
tender smile on his face.
“Natásha, Natásha!” came Countess Mary’s frightened whisper from the door.
“Papa wants to sleep.”
“No, Mamma, he doesn’t want to sleep,” said little Natásha with conviction.
“He’s laughing.”
Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.
“Come in, Mary,” he said to his wife.
She went in and sat down by her husband.
“I did not notice him following me,” she said timidly. “I just looked in.”
Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife and, seeing
her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and kissed her hair.
“May I kiss Mamma?” he asked Natásha.
Natásha smiled bashfully.
“Again!” she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the spot
where Nicholas had placed the kiss.
“I don’t know why you think I am cross,” said Nicholas, replying to the
question he knew was in his wife’s mind.
“You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are like that. It
always seems to me...”
“Mary, don’t talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” he said
gaily.
“It seems to be that you can’t love me, that I am so plain... always... and now...
in this cond...”
“Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it’s love that makes us
see beauty. It is only Malvínas and women of that kind who are loved for their
beauty. But do I love my wife? I don’t love her, but... I don’t know how to put it.
Without you, or when something comes between us like this, I seem lost and
can’t do anything. Now do I love my finger? I don’t love it, but just try to cut it
off!”
“I’m not like that myself, but I understand. So you’re not angry with me?”
“Awfully angry!” he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing his hair he
began to pace the room.
“Do you know, Mary, what I’ve been thinking?” he began, immediately
thinking aloud in his wife’s presence now that they had made it up.
He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A thought
had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he told her of his
intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till spring.
Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and in her
turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the children.
“You can see the woman in her already,” she said in French, pointing to little
Natásha. “You reproach us women with being illogical. Here is our logic. I say:
‘Papa wants to sleep!’ but she says, ‘No, he’s laughing.’ And she was right,” said
Countess Mary with a happy smile.
“Yes, yes.” And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong hand, lifted
her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the legs, and paced the room
with her. There was an expression of carefree happiness on the faces of both
father and daughter.
“But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one,” his wife
whispered in French.
“Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show...”
At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps in the
hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.
“Somebody has come.”
“I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see,” said Countess Mary and left the
room.
In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little daughter a gallop
round the room. Out of breath, he took the laughing child quickly from his
shoulder and pressed her to his heart. His capers reminded him of dancing, and
looking at the child’s round happy little face he thought of what she would be
like when he was an old man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka
with her as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.
“It is he, it is he, Nicholas!” said Countess Mary, re-entering the room a few
minutes later. “Now our Natásha has come to life. You should have seen her
ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed away so long. Well, come along
now, quick, quick! It’s time you two were parted,” she added, looking smilingly
at the little girl who clung to her father.
Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.
Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.
“I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy,” she
whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time she sighed, and
her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though she felt, through her
happiness, that there is another sort of happiness unattainable in this life and of
which she involuntarily thought at that instant.
CHAPTER X
Natásha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already had three
daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she was now
nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was difficult to recognize
in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively Natásha of former days. Her
features were more defined and had a calm, soft, and serene expression. In her
face there was none of the ever-glowing animation that had formerly burned
there and constituted its charm. Now her face and body were often all that one
saw, and her soul was not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a strong,
handsome, and fertile woman. The old fire very rarely kindled in her face now.
That happened only when, as was the case that day, her husband returned home,
or a sick child was convalescent, or when she and Countess Mary spoke of
Prince Andrew (she never mentioned him to her husband, who she imagined was
jealous of Prince Andrew’s memory), or on the rare occasions when something
happened to induce her to sing, a practice she had quite abandoned since her
marriage. At the rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome,
fully developed body she was even more attractive than in former days.
Since their marriage Natásha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in
Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is to say, in
Nicholas’ house. The young Countess Bezúkhova was not often seen in society,
and those who met her there were not pleased with her and found her neither
attractive nor amiable. Not that Natásha liked solitude—she did not know
whether she liked it or not, she even thought that she did not—but with her
pregnancies, her confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every
moment of her husband’s life, she had demands on her time which could be
satisfied only by renouncing society. All who had known Natásha before her
marriage wondered at the change in her as at something extraordinary. Only the
old countess with her maternal instinct had realized that all Natásha’s outbursts
had been due to her need of children and a husband—as she herself had once
exclaimed at Otrádnoe not so much in fun as in earnest—and her mother was
now surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never understood
Natásha, and she kept saying that she had always known that Natásha would
make an exemplary wife and mother.
“Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all bounds,” said
the countess, “so that it even becomes absurd.”
Natásha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk, especially by
the French, which says that a girl should not let herself go when she marries,
should not neglect her accomplishments, should be even more careful of her
appearance than when she was unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as
much as she did before he became her husband. Natásha on the contrary had at
once abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually
powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully seductive. She
took no pains with her manners or with delicacy of speech, or with her toilet, or
to show herself to her husband in her most becoming attitudes, or to avoid
inconveniencing him by being too exacting. She acted in contradiction to all
those rules. She felt that the allurements instinct had formerly taught her to use
would now be merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had
from the first moment given herself up entirely—that is, with her whole soul,
leaving no corner of it hidden from him. She felt that her unity with her husband
was not maintained by the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by
something else—indefinite but firm as the bond between her own body and soul.
To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing romantic songs to
fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange as to adorn herself to attract
herself. To adorn herself for others might perhaps have been agreeable—she did
not know—but she had no time at all for it. The chief reason for devoting no
time either to singing, to dress, or to choosing her words was that she really had
no time to spare for these things.
We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed in a
subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject so trivial that it will
not grow to infinite proportions if one’s entire attention is devoted to it.
The subject which wholly engrossed Natásha’s attention was her family: that
is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should belong entirely to her
and to the home, and the children whom she had to bear, bring into the world,
nurse, and bring up.
And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her whole
soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the larger did that
subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did her powers appear, so that
she concentrated them wholly on that one thing and yet was unable to
accomplish all that she considered necessary.
There were then as now conversations and discussions about women’s rights,
the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and rights, though these
themes were not yet termed questions as they are now; but these topics were not
merely uninteresting to Natásha, she positively did not understand them.
These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing in
marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that is, only the
beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance, which lies in the family.
Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the question of how to
get the greatest gratification from one’s dinner, did not then and do not now exist
for those for whom the purpose of a dinner is the nourishment it affords; and the
purpose of marriage is the family.
If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats two dinners at
once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain his purpose, for his
stomach will not digest the two dinners.
If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to have many
wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in that case will not
have a family.
If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is the
family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more than one can
digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are needed for the family—
that is, one wife or one husband. Natásha needed a husband. A husband was
given her and he gave her a family. And she not only saw no need of any other
or better husband, but as all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that
husband and family, she could not imagine and saw no interest in imagining how
it would be if things were different.
Natásha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the society of
her relatives—Countess Mary, and her brother, her mother, and Sónya. She
valued the company of those to whom she could come striding disheveled from
the nursery in her dressing gown, and with joyful face show a yellow instead of a
green stain on baby’s napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to
the effect that baby was much better.
To such an extent had Natásha let herself go that the way she dressed and did
her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy—she was jealous of Sónya, of
the governess, and of every woman, pretty or plain—were habitual subjects of
jest to those about her. The general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife’s
thumb, which was really true. From the very first days of their married life
Natásha had announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his wife’s
view, to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his life belonged to her
and to the family. His wife’s demands astonished him, but they also flattered
him, and he submitted to them.
Pierre’s subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not flirt with,
but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; did not dare dine at the
Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money on a whim, and did not dare absent
himself for any length of time, except on business—in which his wife included
his intellectual pursuits, which she did not in the least understand but to which
she attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had the right
to regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as he chose. At home
Natásha placed herself in the position of a slave to her husband, and the whole
household went on tiptoe when he was occupied—that is, was reading or writing
in his study. Pierre had but to show a partiality for anything to get just what he
liked done always. He had only to express a wish and Natásha would jump up
and run to fulfill it.
The entire household was governed according to Pierre’s supposed orders, that
is, by his wishes which Natásha tried to guess. Their way of life and place of
residence, their acquaintances and ties, Natásha’s occupations, the children’s
upbringing, were all selected not merely with regard to Pierre’s expressed
wishes, but to what Natásha from the thoughts he expressed in conversation
supposed his wishes to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite
correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them tenaciously. When
Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would fight him with his own
weapons.
Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of their first
child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet nurse three times and
Natásha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day told her of Rousseau’s view, with
which he quite agreed, that to have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When
her next baby was born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and
even of her husband himself—who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing
her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious—she insisted
on having her own way, and after that nursed all her babies herself.
It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and wife would
have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his surprise and delight would find
in his wife’s ideas and actions the very thought against which she had argued,
but divested of everything superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he
had added when expressing his opinion.
After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm consciousness
that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he saw himself reflected in
his wife. He felt the good and bad within himself inextricably mingled and
overlapping. But only what was really good in him was reflected in his wife, all
that was not quite good was rejected. And this was not the result of logical
reasoning but was a direct and mysterious reflection.
CHAPTER XI
Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the Rostóvs he
had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to come to Petersburg to
confer on some important questions that were being discussed there by a society
of which Pierre was one of the principal founders.
On reading that letter (she always read her husband’s letters) Natásha herself
suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though she would feel his absence
very acutely. She attributed immense importance to all her husband’s intellectual
and abstract interests though she did not understand them, and she always
dreaded being a hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre’s timid look of
inquiry after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a
definite date for his return. He was given four weeks’ leave of absence.
Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a fortnight before,
Natásha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and irritability.
Denísov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied with the
present state of affairs, had arrived during that fortnight. He looked at Natásha
with sorrow and surprise as at a bad likeness of a person once dear. A dull,
dejected look, random replies, and talk about the nursery was all he saw and
heard from his former enchantress.
Natásha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her mother, her
brother, Sónya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to console her tried to excuse
Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay in returning.
“It’s all nonsense, all rubbish—those discussions which lead to nothing and all
those idiotic societies!” Natásha declared of the very affairs in the immense
importance of which she firmly believed.
And she would go to the nursery to nurse Pétya, her only boy. No one else
could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this little three-month-
old creature when he lay at her breast and she was conscious of the movement of
his lips and the snuffling of his little nose. That creature said: “You are angry,
you are jealous, you would like to pay him out, you are afraid—but here am I!
And I am he...” and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.
During that fortnight of anxiety Natásha resorted to the baby for comfort so
often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him and he fell ill. She was
terrified by his illness, and yet that was just what she needed. While attending to
him she bore the anxiety about her husband more easily.
She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre’s sleigh was heard at the
front door, and the old nurse—knowing how to please her mistress—entered the
room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a beaming face.
“Has he come?” Natásha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move lest she
should rouse the dozing baby.
“He’s come, ma’am,” whispered the nurse.
The blood rushed to Natásha’s face and her feet involuntarily moved, but she
could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his eyes and looked at
her. “You’re here?” he seemed to be saying, and again lazily smacked his lips.
Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natásha rocked him a little, handed him to
the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door. But at the door she stopped
as if her conscience reproached her for having in her joy left the child too soon,
and she glanced round. The nurse with raised elbows was lifting the infant over
the rail of his cot.
“Go, ma’am! Don’t worry, go!” she whispered, smiling, with the kind of
familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.
Natásha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.
Denísov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with his pipe,
now for the first time recognized the old Natásha. A flood of brilliant, joyful
light poured from her transfigured face.
“He’s come!” she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denísov felt that he too was
delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had returned.
On reaching the vestibule Natásha saw a tall figure in a fur coat unwinding his
scarf. “It’s he! It’s really he! He has come!” she said to herself, and rushing at
him embraced him, pressed his head to her breast, and then pushed him back and
gazed at his ruddy, happy face, covered with hoarfrost. “Yes, it is he, happy and
contented....”
Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had experienced
for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her face vanished; she frowned
and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of reproaches and angry words.
“Yes, it’s all very well for you. You are pleased, you’ve had a good time....
But what about me? You might at least have shown consideration for the
children. I am nursing and my milk was spoiled.... Pétya was at death’s door. But
you were enjoying yourself. Yes, enjoying...”
Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come sooner; he knew
this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a minute or two; above all
he knew that he himself was bright and happy. He wanted to smile but dared not
even think of doing so. He made a piteous, frightened face and bent down.
“I could not, on my honor. But how is Pétya?”
“All right now. Come along! I wonder you’re not ashamed! If only you could
see what I was like without you, how I suffered!”
“You are well?”
“Come, come!” she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went to their
rooms.
When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the nursery
holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right palm and dandling
him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby’s broad face with its toothless
open mouth. The storm was long since over and there was bright, joyous
sunshine on Natásha’s face as she gazed tenderly at her husband and child.
“And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?” she asked.
“Yes, capitally.”
“You see, he holds it up.” (She meant the baby’s head.) “But how he did
frighten me... You’ve seen the princess? Is it true she’s in love with that...”
“Yes, just fancy...”
At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the baby on
his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries. But in spite of much
that was interesting and had to be discussed, the baby with the little cap on its
unsteady head evidently absorbed all his attention.
“How sweet!” said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the baby.
“Now, Nicholas,” she added, turning to her husband, “I can’t understand how it
is you don’t see the charm of these delicious marvels.”
“I don’t and can’t,” replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby. “A lump of
flesh. Come along, Pierre!”
“And yet he’s such an affectionate father,” said Countess Mary, vindicating
her husband, “but only after they are a year old or so...”
“Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly,” said Natásha. “He says his hand is just
made for a baby’s seat. Just look!”
“Only not for this...” Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and shifting the
baby he gave him to the nurse.
CHAPTER XII
As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several perfectly distinct
worlds which merged into one harmonious whole, though each retained its own
peculiarities and made concessions to the others. Every event, joyful or sad, that
took place in that house was important to all these worlds, but each had its own
special reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the
others.
For instance, Pierre’s return was a joyful and important event and they all felt
it to be so.
The servants—the most reliable judges of their masters because they judge not
by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their acts and way of life—
were glad of Pierre’s return because they knew that when he was there Count
Nicholas would cease going every day to attend to the estate, and would be in
better spirits and temper, and also because they would all receive handsome
presents for the holidays.
The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre’s return because no one
else drew them into the social life of the household as he did. He alone could
play on the clavichord that écossaise (his only piece) to which, as he said, all
possible dances could be danced, and they felt sure he had brought presents for
them all.
Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent, with curly
light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted because Uncle Pierre as he
called him was the object of his rapturous and passionate affection. No one had
instilled into him this love for Pierre whom he saw only occasionally. Countess
Mary who had brought him up had done her utmost to make him love her
husband as she loved him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him
with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did not want to be
an hussar or a Knight of St. George like his uncle Nicholas; he wanted to be
learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In Pierre’s presence his face always shone
with pleasure and he flushed and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He
did not miss a single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or
by himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had said.
Pierre’s past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of which young Nicholas
had formed a vague poetic picture from some words he had overheard), his
adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platón Karatáev (of whom he had heard
from Pierre), his love for Natásha (of whom the lad was also particularly fond),
and especially Pierre’s friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not
remember—all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.
From broken remarks about Natásha and his father, from the emotion with
which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful, reverent tenderness
with which Natásha spoke of him, the boy, who was only just beginning to guess
what love is, derived the notion that his father had loved Natásha and when
dying had left her to his friend. But the father whom the boy did not remember
appeared to him a divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never
thought without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the boy
also was happy that Pierre had arrived.
The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and unite
any company he was in.
The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were pleased to
have back a friend whose presence made life run more smoothly and peacefully.
The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and especially
that Natásha would now be herself again.
Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and made haste to
satisfy all their expectations.
Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the aid of a
list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not forgetting his mother—
and brother-in-law’s commissions, nor the dress material for a present to Belóva,
nor toys for his wife’s nephews. In the early days of his marriage it had seemed
strange to him that his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the
things he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious
annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time he grew used
to this demand. Knowing that Natásha asked nothing for herself, and gave him
commissions for others only when he himself had offered to undertake them, he
now found an unexpected and childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for
everyone in the house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natásha’s
censure it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other
defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were qualities) of
untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added stinginess.
From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing entailing
heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he spent only half as much
as before, and that his affairs—which had been in disorder of late, chiefly
because of his first wife’s debts—had begun to improve.
Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive luxury,
the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no longer his nor did he
wish for it. He felt that his way of life had now been settled once for all till death
and that to change it was not in his power, and so that way of life proved
economical.
With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.
“What do you think of this?” said he, unrolling a piece of stuff like a
shopman.
Natásha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on her lap,
turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the things he showed her.
“That’s for Belóva? Excellent!” She felt the quality of the material. “It was a
ruble an arshin, I suppose?”
Pierre told her the price.
“Too dear!” Natásha remarked. “How pleased the children will be and
Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this,” she added, unable to
suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb set with pearls, of a
kind then just coming into fashion.
“Adèle tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it,” returned Pierre.
“When am I to wear it?” and Natásha stuck it in her coil of hair. “When I take
little Másha into society? Perhaps they will be fashionable again by then. Well,
let’s go now.”
And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and then to the old
countess’ rooms.
The countess was sitting with her companion Belóva, playing grand-patience
as usual, when Pierre and Natásha came into the drawing room with parcels
under their arms.
The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with a frill
that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper lip had sunk in, and
her eyes were dim.
After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession, she felt
herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left without aim or object
for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or kept awake, but did not live. Life gave
her no new impressions. She wanted nothing from life but tranquillity, and that
tranquillity only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on
living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in very young
children and very old people was particularly evident in her. Her life had no
external aims—only a need to exercise her various functions and inclinations
was apparent. She had to eat, sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her
anger, and so on, merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves,
and a liver. She did these things not under any external impulse as people in the
full vigor of life do, when behind the purpose for which they strive that of
exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She talked only because she
physically needed to exercise her tongue and lungs. She cried as a child does,
because her nose had to be cleared, and so on. What for people in their full vigor
is an aim was for her evidently merely a pretext.
Thus in the morning—especially if she had eaten anything rich the day before
—she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the handiest pretext
Belóva’s deafness.
She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other end of
the room.
“It seems a little warmer today, my dear,” she would murmur.
And when Belóva replied: “Oh yes, they’ve come,” she would mutter angrily:
“O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!”
Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or too damp or
not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability her face would grow
yellow, and her maids knew by infallible symptoms when Belóva would again
be deaf, the snuff damp, and the countess’ face yellow. Just as she needed to
work off her spleen so she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of
thinking—and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she needed to
cry, the deceased count would be the pretext. When she wanted to be agitated,
Nicholas and his health would be the pretext, and when she felt a need to speak
spitefully, the pretext would be Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed
exercise, which was usually toward seven o’clock when she had had an after-
dinner rest in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same
stories over and over again to the same audience.
The old lady’s condition was understood by the whole household though no
one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible effort to satisfy her needs.
Only by a rare glance exchanged with a sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre,
Natásha, and Countess Mary was the common understanding of her condition
expressed.
But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had played
her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole self, that we must all
become like her, and that they were glad to yield to her, to restrain themselves
for this once precious being formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so
much to be pitied. “Memento mori,” said these glances.
Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and the little
children failed to understand this and avoided her.
CHAPTER XIII
When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was in one of
her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion of playing
patience, and so—though by force of habit she greeted him with the words she
always used when Pierre or her son returned after an absence: “High time, my
dear, high time! We were all weary of waiting for you. Well, thank God!” and
received her presents with another customary remark: “It’s not the gift that’s
precious, my dear, but that you give it to me, an old woman...”—yet it was
evident that she was not pleased by Pierre’s arrival at that moment when it
diverted her attention from the unfinished game.
She finished her game of patience and only then examined the presents. They
consisted of a box for cards, of splendid workmanship, a bright-blue Sèvres tea
cup with shepherdesses depicted on it and with a lid, and a gold snuffbox with
the count’s portrait on the lid which Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in
Petersburg. The countess had long wished for such a box, but as she did not want
to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the portrait and gave her attention
chiefly to the box for cards.
“Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up,” said she as she always did.
“But best of all you have brought yourself back—for I never saw anything like
it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are we to do with her? She is
like a mad woman when you are away. Doesn’t see anything, doesn’t remember
anything,” she went on, repeating her usual phrases. “Look, Anna Timoféevna,”
she added to her companion, “see what a box for cards my son has brought us!”
Belóva admired the presents and was delighted with her dress material.
Though Pierre, Natásha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denísov had much to
talk about that they could not discuss before the old countess—not that anything
was hidden from her, but because she had dropped so far behindhand in many
things that had they begun to converse in her presence they would have had to
answer inopportune questions and to repeat what they had already told her many
times: that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would
again be unable to remember—yet they sat at tea round the samovar in the
drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered the countess’ questions as to
whether Prince Vasíli had aged and whether Countess Mary Alexéevna had sent
greetings and still thought of them, and other matters that interested no one and
to which she herself was indifferent.
Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable, continued all
through teatime. All the grown-up members of the family were assembled near
the round tea table at which Sónya presided beside the samovar. The children
with their tutors and governesses had had tea and their voices were audible from
the next room. At tea all sat in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the
stove at a small table where his tea was handed to him; Mílka, the old gray
borzoi bitch (daughter of the first Mílka), with a quite gray face and large black
eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the armchair beside him;
Denísov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers had turned half gray, sat
beside countess Mary with his general’s tunic unbuttoned; Pierre sat between his
wife and the old countess. He spoke of what he knew might interest the old lady
and that she could understand. He told her of external social events and of the
people who had formed the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a
real, living, and distinct group, but who were now for the most part scattered
about the world and like herself were garnering the last ears of the harvests they
had sown in earlier years. But to the old countess those contemporaries of hers
seemed to be the only serious and real society. Natásha saw by Pierre’s
animation that his visit had been interesting and that he had much to tell them
but dare not say it before the old countess. Denísov, not being a member of the
family, did not understand Pierre’s caution and being, as a malcontent, much
interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre to tell them
about what had happened in the Semënovsk regiment, then about Arakchéev, and
then about the Bible Society. Once or twice Pierre was carried away and began
to speak of these things, but Nicholas and Natásha always brought him back to
the health of Prince Iván and Countess Mary Alexéevna.
“Well, and all this idiocy—Gossner and Tatáwinova?” Denísov asked. “Is that
weally still going on?”
“Going on?” Pierre exclaimed. “Why more than ever! The Bible Society is the
whole government now!”
“What is that, mon cher ami?” asked the countess, who had finished her tea
and evidently needed a pretext for being angry after her meal. “What are you
saying about the government? I don’t understand.”
“Well, you know, Maman,” Nicholas interposed, knowing how to translate
things into his mother’s language, “Prince Alexander Golítsyn has founded a
society and in consequence has great influence, they say.”
“Arakchéev and Golítsyn,” incautiously remarked Pierre, “are now the whole
government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere and are
afraid of everything.”
“Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most estimable man. I
used to meet him at Mary Antónovna’s,” said the countess in an offended tone;
and still more offended that they all remained silent, she went on: “Nowadays
everyone finds fault. A Gospel Society! Well, and what harm is there in that?”
and she rose (everybody else got up too) and with a severe expression sailed
back to her table in the sitting room.
The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the
children’s voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some jolly
excitement was going on there.
“Finished, finished!” little Natásha’s gleeful yell rose above them all.
Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natásha he never
lost sight of) and smiled happily.
“That’s delightful music!” said he.
“It means that Anna Makárovna has finished her stocking,” said Countess
Mary.
“Oh, I’ll go and see,” said Pierre, jumping up. “You know,” he added,
stopping at the door, “why I’m especially fond of that music? It is always the
first thing that tells me all is well. When I was driving here today, the nearer I
got to the house the more anxious I grew. As I entered the anteroom I heard
Andrúsha’s peals of laughter and that meant that all was well.”
“I know! I know that feeling,” said Nicholas. “But I mustn’t go there—those
stockings are to be a surprise for me.”
Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew still louder.
“Come, Anna Makárovna,” Pierre’s voice was heard saying, “come here into
the middle of the room and at the word of command, ‘One, two,’ and when I say
‘three’... You stand here, and you in my arms—well now! One, two!...” said
Pierre, and a silence followed: “three!” and a rapturously breathless cry of
children’s voices filled the room. “Two, two!” they shouted.
This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to herself
Anna Makárovna used to knit at the same time on the same needles, and which,
when they were ready, she always triumphantly drew, one out of the other, in the
children’s presence.
CHAPTER XIV
Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They kissed everyone,
the tutors and governesses made their bows, and they went out. Only young
Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles whispered to the boy to come
downstairs.
“No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay,” replied Nicholas
Bolkónski also in a whisper.
“Ma tante, please let me stay,” said he, going up to his aunt.
His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary glanced at
him and turned to Pierre.
“When you are here he can’t tear himself away,” she said.
“I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good night!” said
Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned to young Nicholas with a
smile. “You and I haven’t seen anything of one another yet.... How like he is
growing, Mary!” he added, addressing Countess Mary.
“Like my father?” asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up at Pierre
with bright, ecstatic eyes.
Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the children
had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork; Natásha did not take
her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denísov rose, asked for their pipes,
smoked, went to fetch more tea from Sónya—who sat weary but resolute at the
samovar—and questioned Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy sat with
shining eyes unnoticed in a corner, starting every now and then and muttering
something to himself, and evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion
as he turned his curly head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down collar,
toward the place where Pierre sat.
The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in power, in
which most people see the chief interest of home politics. Denísov, dissatisfied
with the government on account of his own disappointments in the service, heard
with pleasure of the things done in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and
made forcible and sharp comments on what Pierre told them.
“One used to have to be a German—now one must dance with Tatáwinova
and Madame Kwüdener, and wead Ecka’tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they
should let that fine fellow Bonaparte loose—he’d knock all this nonsense out of
them! Fancy giving the command of the Semënov wegiment to a fellow like that
Schwa’tz!” he cried.
Nicholas, though free from Denísov’s readiness to find fault with everything,
also thought that discussion of the government was a very serious and weighty
matter, and the fact that A had been appointed Minister of This and B Governor
General of That, and that the Emperor had said so-and-so and this minister so-
and-so, seemed to him very important. And so he thought it necessary to take an
interest in these things and to question Pierre. The questions put by these two
kept the conversation from changing its ordinary character of gossip about the
higher government circles.
But Natásha, knowing all her husband’s ways and ideas, saw that he had long
been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation to another channel
and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake of which he had gone to
Petersburg to consult with his new friend Prince Theodore, and she helped him
by asking how his affairs with Prince Theodore had gone.
“What was it about?” asked Nicholas.
“Always the same thing,” said Pierre, looking round at his listeners.
“Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they cannot be allowed to go
on so and that it is the duty of all decent men to counteract it as far as they can.”
“What can decent men do?” Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly. “What can
be done?”
“Why, this...”
“Come into my study,” said Nicholas.
Natásha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby, now heard
the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary followed her. The
men went into the study and little Nicholas Bolkónski followed them unnoticed
by his uncle and sat down at the writing table in a shady corner by the window.
“Well, what would you do?” asked Denísov.
“Always some fantastic schemes,” said Nicholas.
“Why this,” began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room, sometimes
stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: “the position in Petersburg is this: the
Emperor does not look into anything. He has abandoned himself altogether to
this mysticism” (Pierre could not tolerate mysticism in anyone now). “He seeks
only for peace, and only these people sans foi ni loi * can give it him—people
who recklessly hack at and strangle everything—Magnítski, Arakchéev, and tutti
quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after your estates yourself but
only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your steward was the more readily your
object might be attained,” he said to Nicholas.
* Without faith or law.
Pierre smiled, Natásha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his brows still
more and began proving to Pierre that there was no prospect of any great change
and that all the danger he spoke of existed only in his imagination. Pierre
maintained the contrary, and as his mental faculties were greater and more
resourceful, Nicholas felt himself cornered. This made him still angrier, for he
was fully convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him stronger
than reason, of the justice of his opinion.
“I will tell you this,” he said, rising and trying with nervously twitching
fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally abandoning the attempt. “I
can’t prove it to you. You say that everything here is rotten and that an
overthrow is coming: I don’t see it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance
is a conditional matter, and to that I reply: ‘You are my best friend, as you know,
but if you formed a secret society and began working against the government—
be it what it may—I know it is my duty to obey the government. And if
Arakchéev ordered me to lead a squadron against you and cut you down, I
should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.’ And you may argue about that as
you like!”
An awkward silence followed these words. Natásha was the first to speak,
defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense was weak and
inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was resumed, and no longer
in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas’ last remark.
When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkónski went up to
Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.
“Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree with you?” he
asked.
And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex, and
powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in this boy
during that conversation, and remembering all he had said he regretted that the
lad should have heard him. He had, however, to give him an answer.
“Yes, I think so,” he said reluctantly, and left the study.
The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what he had
done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to Nicholas.
“Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally,” he said, pointing to the
broken sealing wax and pens.
Nicholas started angrily.
“All right, all right,” he said, throwing the bits under the table.
And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned away from
the boy.
“You ought not to have been here at all,” he said.
CHAPTER XV
The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies, but turned on
the subject Nicholas liked best—recollections of 1812. Denísov started these and
Pierre was particularly agreeable and amusing about them. The family separated
on the most friendly terms.
After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given instructions to
the steward who had been waiting for him, went to the bedroom in his dressing
gown, where he found his wife still at her table, writing.
“What are you writing, Mary?” Nicholas asked.
Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing would not
be understood or approved by her husband.
She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at the same
time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would now have to tell him.
“A diary, Nicholas,” she replied, handing him a blue exercise book filled with
her firm, bold writing.
“A diary?” Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up the book.
It was in French.
December 4. Today when Andrúsha (her eldest boy) woke up he did not wish
to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was naughty and obstinate. I
tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then I took the matter in hand: I left him
alone and began with nurse’s help to get the other children up, telling him that I
did not love him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped
out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not calm him for a
long time. It was plain that what troubled him most was that he had grieved me.
Afterwards in the evening when I gave him his ticket, he again began crying
piteously and kissing me. One can do anything with him by tenderness.
Mítya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding. He had
none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others while they were eating!
I think that punishment by depriving children of sweets only develops their
greediness. Must tell Nicholas this.
Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant eyes gazed at
him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her diary? There could be
no doubt not only of his approval but also of his admiration for his wife.
Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or even done at
all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of which the sole aim was the
children’s moral welfare delighted him. Had Nicholas been able to analyze his
feelings he would have found that his steady, tender, and proud love of his wife
rested on his feeling of wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world,
almost beyond his reach, in which she had her being.
He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own
insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the more that she
with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part of himself.
“I quite, quite approve, my dearest!” said he with a significant look, and after
a short pause he added: “And I behaved badly today. You weren’t in the study.
We began disputing—Pierre and I—and I lost my temper. But he is impossible:
such a child! I don’t know what would become of him if Natásha didn’t keep
him in hand.... Have you any idea why he went to Petersburg? They have
formed...”
“Yes, I know,” said Countess Mary. “Natásha told me.”
“Well, then, you know,” Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere
recollection of their discussion, “he wanted to convince me that it is every honest
man’s duty to go against the government, and that the oath of allegiance and
duty... I am sorry you weren’t there. They all fell on me—Denísov and Natásha...
Natásha is absurd. How she rules over him! And yet there need only be a
discussion and she has no words of her own but only repeats his sayings...”
added Nicholas, yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge
those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying about Natásha
could have been applied word for word to himself in relation to his wife.
“Yes, I have noticed that,” said Countess Mary.
“When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he started
proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there—what would you have
said?”
“As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natásha so. Pierre says everybody
is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that it is our duty to help our
neighbor. Of course he is right there,” said Countess Mary, “but he forgets that
we have other duties nearer to us, duties indicated to us by God Himself, and
that though we might expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children.”
“Yes, that’s it! That’s just what I said to him,” put in Nicholas, who fancied he
really had said it. “But they insisted on their own view: love of one’s neighbor
and Christianity—and all this in the presence of young Nicholas, who had gone
into my study and broke all my things.”
“Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little Nicholas,” said
Countess Mary. “He is such an exceptional boy. I am afraid I neglect him in
favor of my own: we all have children and relations while he has no one. He is
constantly alone with his thoughts.”
“Well, I don’t think you need reproach yourself on his account. All that the
fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are doing for him, and of
course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine lad! This evening he listened to
Pierre in a sort of trance, and fancy—as we were going in to supper I looked and
he had broken everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at
once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!” repeated
Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkónski but was always
anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad.
“Still, I am not the same as his own mother,” said Countess Mary. “I feel I am
not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am dreadfully afraid for
him. It would be good for him to have companions.”
“Well it won’t be for long. Next summer I’ll take him to Petersburg,” said
Nicholas. “Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and always will be,” he continued,
returning to the talk in the study which had evidently disturbed him. “Well, what
business is it of mine what goes on there—whether Arakchéev is bad, and all
that? What business was it of mine when I married and was so deep in debt that I
was threatened with prison, and had a mother who could not see or understand
it? And then there are you and the children and our affairs. Is it for my own
pleasure that I am at the farm or in the office from morning to night? No, but I
know I must work to comfort my mother, to repay you, and not to leave the
children such beggars as I was.”
Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread alone and
that he attached too much importance to these matters. But she knew she must
not say this and that it would be useless to do so. She only took his hand and
kissed it. He took this as a sign of approval and a confirmation of his thoughts,
and after a few minutes’ reflection continued to think aloud.
“You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofánych” (this was his overseer) “came
back from the Tambóv estate and told me they are already offering eighty
thousand rubles for the forest.”
And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of
repurchasing Otrádnoe before long, and added: “Another ten years of life and I
shall leave the children... in an excellent position.”
Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he told her. She
knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would sometimes ask her what
he had been saying, and be vexed if he noticed that she had been thinking about
something else. But she had to force herself to attend, for what he was saying did
not interest her at all. She looked at him and did not think, but felt, about
something different. She felt a submissive tender love for this man who would
never understand all that she understood, and this seemed to make her love for
him still stronger and added a touch of passionate tenderness. Besides this
feeling which absorbed her altogether and hindered her from following the
details of her husband’s plans, thoughts that had no connection with what he was
saying flitted through her mind. She thought of her nephew. Her husband’s
account of the boy’s agitation while Pierre was speaking struck her forcibly, and
various traits of his gentle, sensitive character recurred to her mind; and while
thinking of her nephew she thought also of her own children. She did not
compare them with him, but compared her feeling for them with her feeling for
him, and felt with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for
young Nicholas.
Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the difference in
their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and promised in her heart to
do better and to accomplish the impossible—in this life to love her husband, her
children, little Nicholas, and all her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind.
Countess Mary’s soul always strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the
absolute, and could therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the lofty,
secret suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on her face. Nicholas
gazed at her. “O God! What will become of us if she dies, as I always fear when
her face is like that?” thought he, and placing himself before the icon he began to
say his evening prayers.
CHAPTER XVI
Natásha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband and wife
can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity, understanding and
expressing each other’s thoughts in ways contrary to all rules of logic, without
premises, deductions, or conclusions, and in a quite peculiar way. Natásha was
so used to this kind of talk with her husband that for her it was the surest sign of
something being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical
reasoning. When he began proving anything, or talking argumentatively and
calmly and she, led on by his example, began to do the same, she knew that they
were on the verge of a quarrel.
From the moment they were alone and Natásha came up to him with wide-
open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her bosom, saying:
“Now you are all mine, mine! You won’t escape!”—from that moment this
conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic and contrary to them
because quite different subjects were talked about at one and the same time. This
simultaneous discussion of many topics did not prevent a clear understanding
but on the contrary was the surest sign that they fully understood one another.
Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and contradictory,
except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this intercourse contrary to all
laws of reason, the words themselves were not consecutive and clear but only the
feeling that prompted them.
Natásha spoke to Pierre about her brother’s life and doings, of how she had
suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of how she was fonder than
ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way better than herself. In saying this
Natásha was sincere in acknowledging Mary’s superiority, but at the same time
by saying it she made a demand on Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her
to Mary and to all other women, and that now, especially after having seen many
women in Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.
Pierre, answering Natásha’s words, told her how intolerable it had been for
him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.
“I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies,” he said. “It was simply dull.
Besides, I was very busy.”
Natásha looked intently at him and went on:
“Mary is so splendid,” she said. “How she understands children! It is as if she
saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance, Mítya was naughty...”
“How like his father he is,” Pierre interjected.
Natásha knew why he mentioned Mítya’s likeness to Nicholas: the
recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and he wanted
to know what Natásha thought of it.
“Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not generally
accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a fresh line,” said she,
repeating words Pierre had once uttered.
“No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are an
amusement—almost a pastime,” said Pierre. “For instance, he is collecting a
library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till he has read what he had
already bought—Sismondi and Rousseau and Montesquieu,” he added with a
smile. “You know how much I...” he began to soften down what he had said; but
Natásha interrupted him to show that this was unnecessary.
“So you say ideas are an amusement to him....”
“Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg I saw
everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all else is mere
amusement.”
“Ah, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you met the children,” said Natásha.
“Which was most delighted? Lisa, I’m sure.”
“Yes,” Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind. “Nicholas says
we ought not to think. But I can’t help it. Besides, when I was in Petersburg I felt
(I can say this to you) that the whole affair would go to pieces without me—
everyone was pulling his own way. But I succeeded in uniting them all; and then
my idea is so clear and simple. You see, I don’t say that we ought to oppose this
and that. We may be mistaken. What I say is: ‘Join hands, you who love the
right, and let there be but one banner—that of active virtue.’ Prince Sergéy is a
fine fellow and clever.”
Natásha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre’s idea, but one
thing disconcerted her. “Can a man so important and necessary to society be also
my husband? How did this happen?” She wished to express this doubt to him.
“Now who could decide whether he is really cleverer than all the others?” she
asked herself, and passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected.
Judging by what he had said there was no one he had respected so highly as
Platón Karatáev.
“Do you know what I am thinking about?” she asked. “About Platón Karatáev.
Would he have approved of you now, do you think?”
Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood his wife’s line of
thought.
“Platón Karatáev?” he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely trying to
imagine Karatáev’s opinion on the subject. “He would not have understood... yet
perhaps he would.”
“I love you awfully!” Natásha suddenly said. “Awfully, awfully!”
“No, he would not have approved,” said Pierre, after reflection. “What he
would have approved of is our family life. He was always so anxious to find
seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and I should have been proud to
let him see us. There now—you talk of my absence, but you wouldn’t believe
what a special feeling I have for you after a separation....”
“Yes, I should think...” Natásha began.
“No, it’s not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn’t love more,
but this is something special.... Yes, of course—” he did not finish because their
eyes meeting said the rest.
“What nonsense it is,” Natásha suddenly exclaimed, “about honeymoons, and
that the greatest happiness is at first! On the contrary, now is the best of all. If
only you did not go away! Do you remember how we quarreled? And it was
always my fault. Always mine. And what we quarreled about—I don’t even
remember!”
“Always about the same thing,” said Pierre with a smile. “Jealo...”
“Don’t say it! I can’t bear it!” Natásha cried, and her eyes glittered coldly and
vindictively. “Did you see her?” she added, after a pause.
“No, and if I had I shouldn’t have recognized her.”
They were silent for a while.
“Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was looking at
you,” Natásha began, evidently anxious to disperse the cloud that had come over
them. “You are as like him as two peas—like the boy.” (She meant her little son.)
“Oh, it’s time to go to him.... The milk’s come.... But I’m sorry to leave you.”
They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one another at
the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with self-satisfaction and
enthusiasm, Natásha with a quiet, happy smile. Having interrupted one another
they both stopped to let the other continue.
“No. What did you say? Go on, go on.”
“No, you go on, I was talking nonsense,” said Natásha.
Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his complacent
reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it seemed to him that he
was chosen to give a new direction to the whole of Russian society and to the
whole world.
“I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are always simple ones.
My whole idea is that if vicious people are united and constitute a power, then
honest folk must do the same. Now that’s simple enough.”
“Yes.”
“And what were you going to say?”
“I? Only nonsense.”
“But all the same?”
“Oh nothing, only a trifle,” said Natásha, smiling still more brightly. “I only
wanted to tell you about Pétya: today nurse was coming to take him from me,
and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung to me. I’m sure he thought he was
hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now he’s crying. Well, good-by!” and she left the
room.
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